Billy Douglas and Buster Douglas
Posted: 03 Mar 2010, 21:22
Buster Douglas was a gifted boxer.
And he was tall (6'5") which in his case was an advantage.
His father, Billy Douglas, was a top level middleweight/lightheavyweight from Ohio who would fight in Philadelphia and get cheated over and over again by the Philly officials. Trainers told me about fights they had seen in Philly where Billy Douglas had knocked down his Philadelphia opponent (Saad Muhammed, and others) and the ref would give the guy all day to recover and then later stop the fight as a TKO in Douglas' opponent's favor when Douglas was not hurt as compared with the condition his opponent had been in earlier.
[The Kevin Howard-Sugar Ray Leonard routine].
I saw an old Billy Douglas lose to a young, powerful Jerry Martin in Philly.
Douglas was not winning the fight, although he was always dangerous because he punched SO HARD.
In the last round (10th) the Philly ref stopped the fight and gave Martin a TKO win.
I talked to Douglas immediately after the fight. He said, "Why did they stop it. There was no reason to stop it. Every time he jabbed, I jabbed. Every time he threw a right hand, I threw a right hand."
I always carried four wax quart cartons of orange juice with me in a paper bag when I went to fight card and gave them to fighters whose performances I liked after the card in the dressing room (as long as they didn't have a cut mouth).
I handed a carton of orange juice to Douglas minutes after he came down from the ring after his fight with Martin. (It was a crummy arena where the room used as a dressing room was jammed in right next to the side of the ring ).
Douglas took the carton in his hands and tried to open it, but his hands were not coordinated enough to rip the top open. ( a combination of just fighting with closed fists for ten rounds and his upset at his being cheated by the Philly officials again).
I took it out of his hands and opened it and gave it back to him and he drank it down.
When a fight is over a fighter is dehydrated and needs something to replenish his dehydrated system. I was always amazed to see no trainer ever did anything about that at the end of a fight.
At that moment the system will grab at whatever is put in it, and it will go deep into the blood stream.
I have seen spent fighters come back to life to a good degree from a drink of a carton of orange juice immediately after a fight. Several of them said to me, "Hey, this is great. Much better than my manager and me having drinks [alchohol] back at the hotel room."
The ignorance of the physical system is breathtaking in many cases of the people (parasites) who position themselves around fighters.
As for Buster Douglas, Billy Douglas' son, he was a gifted fighter who had genuine boxing ability, usually won the first rounds of his fights, and then faded and lost against good opponents, almost as if he had a built in loser's psychological makeup. Trainers said to me, "He's very good, but then he always collapses on cue later in a fight."
For his fight with Tyson, Buster Douglas had nothing to lose, so there was NO psychological pressure on him. Combined with that, he had a dislike of Tyson, and in this one case, a strong psychological urge to win the fight. That's what he did. Of course this was a Tyson whose physical system had been harmed by the lithium and Thorazine he took in combination at the insistence of his TV star wife, gotten illegally through a very old, retired 'doctor' who sent the drugs to Tyson's wife illegally through the mail.
Douglas really wanted to win that fight, and he did, although for several days afterward it looked like Don King was going to get the result reversed.
I remember hearing Archie Moore say on a local sports talk show of Buster Douglas and his performance in the Tyson fight, "He was jabbing like a welterweight. His right hands were landing high on the head, but they still bothered Tyson. And he fought well inside, too."
Buster Douglas fought one great fight in his career.
For his loss to the mediocrity Holyfield, Douglas did not train a single day.
None of that was to Holyfield's credit. Douglas' shrunken lower legs for the Holyfield fight showed he had done no running at all. His weight was HOW MANY pounds heavier than for his fight with Tyson?
Why did that happen?
Because he could not take the psychological strain of being expected to be a winner and a champion.
But the circumstances for his fight against Tyson happened to come out just right for him to be a winner psychologically. Several trainers pointed out to me the proof of that was when Douglas was knocked down by Tyson after winning every round up to that point.
As he sat on the canvas Douglas angrily hit his glove down against the canvas in a show of disgust that he had allowed that to happen. To these trainers that illustrated that he had a total winner's state of mind for that fight.
And of course he was facing a Tyson who had been destroyed as a championship athlete by the powerful psychiatric drugs he had taken, combined with the fact that having left his legal manager Bill Cayton to go over to the sicko Don King, Tyson now had a "corner" consisting of clowns who were his buddies he watched television with, who had zero qualifications to be in any fighter's corner.
And he was tall (6'5") which in his case was an advantage.
His father, Billy Douglas, was a top level middleweight/lightheavyweight from Ohio who would fight in Philadelphia and get cheated over and over again by the Philly officials. Trainers told me about fights they had seen in Philly where Billy Douglas had knocked down his Philadelphia opponent (Saad Muhammed, and others) and the ref would give the guy all day to recover and then later stop the fight as a TKO in Douglas' opponent's favor when Douglas was not hurt as compared with the condition his opponent had been in earlier.
[The Kevin Howard-Sugar Ray Leonard routine].
I saw an old Billy Douglas lose to a young, powerful Jerry Martin in Philly.
Douglas was not winning the fight, although he was always dangerous because he punched SO HARD.
In the last round (10th) the Philly ref stopped the fight and gave Martin a TKO win.
I talked to Douglas immediately after the fight. He said, "Why did they stop it. There was no reason to stop it. Every time he jabbed, I jabbed. Every time he threw a right hand, I threw a right hand."
I always carried four wax quart cartons of orange juice with me in a paper bag when I went to fight card and gave them to fighters whose performances I liked after the card in the dressing room (as long as they didn't have a cut mouth).
I handed a carton of orange juice to Douglas minutes after he came down from the ring after his fight with Martin. (It was a crummy arena where the room used as a dressing room was jammed in right next to the side of the ring ).
Douglas took the carton in his hands and tried to open it, but his hands were not coordinated enough to rip the top open. ( a combination of just fighting with closed fists for ten rounds and his upset at his being cheated by the Philly officials again).
I took it out of his hands and opened it and gave it back to him and he drank it down.
When a fight is over a fighter is dehydrated and needs something to replenish his dehydrated system. I was always amazed to see no trainer ever did anything about that at the end of a fight.
At that moment the system will grab at whatever is put in it, and it will go deep into the blood stream.
I have seen spent fighters come back to life to a good degree from a drink of a carton of orange juice immediately after a fight. Several of them said to me, "Hey, this is great. Much better than my manager and me having drinks [alchohol] back at the hotel room."
The ignorance of the physical system is breathtaking in many cases of the people (parasites) who position themselves around fighters.
As for Buster Douglas, Billy Douglas' son, he was a gifted fighter who had genuine boxing ability, usually won the first rounds of his fights, and then faded and lost against good opponents, almost as if he had a built in loser's psychological makeup. Trainers said to me, "He's very good, but then he always collapses on cue later in a fight."
For his fight with Tyson, Buster Douglas had nothing to lose, so there was NO psychological pressure on him. Combined with that, he had a dislike of Tyson, and in this one case, a strong psychological urge to win the fight. That's what he did. Of course this was a Tyson whose physical system had been harmed by the lithium and Thorazine he took in combination at the insistence of his TV star wife, gotten illegally through a very old, retired 'doctor' who sent the drugs to Tyson's wife illegally through the mail.
Douglas really wanted to win that fight, and he did, although for several days afterward it looked like Don King was going to get the result reversed.
I remember hearing Archie Moore say on a local sports talk show of Buster Douglas and his performance in the Tyson fight, "He was jabbing like a welterweight. His right hands were landing high on the head, but they still bothered Tyson. And he fought well inside, too."
Buster Douglas fought one great fight in his career.
For his loss to the mediocrity Holyfield, Douglas did not train a single day.
None of that was to Holyfield's credit. Douglas' shrunken lower legs for the Holyfield fight showed he had done no running at all. His weight was HOW MANY pounds heavier than for his fight with Tyson?
Why did that happen?
Because he could not take the psychological strain of being expected to be a winner and a champion.
But the circumstances for his fight against Tyson happened to come out just right for him to be a winner psychologically. Several trainers pointed out to me the proof of that was when Douglas was knocked down by Tyson after winning every round up to that point.
As he sat on the canvas Douglas angrily hit his glove down against the canvas in a show of disgust that he had allowed that to happen. To these trainers that illustrated that he had a total winner's state of mind for that fight.
And of course he was facing a Tyson who had been destroyed as a championship athlete by the powerful psychiatric drugs he had taken, combined with the fact that having left his legal manager Bill Cayton to go over to the sicko Don King, Tyson now had a "corner" consisting of clowns who were his buddies he watched television with, who had zero qualifications to be in any fighter's corner.