Larry Merchant, who just turned 79, has no problems recollecting where he was that day. He was ringside, along with Jim Lampley and Sugar Ray Leonard, calling the action for HBO Sports.
"Well, it’s been 20 years since Douglas-Tyson and now I realize that: A) Nelson Mandela was released from prison on that same day and B) it was my 59th birthday,” Merchant told Maxboxing this past Friday. For Merchant and his HBO colleagues, this was his second trip to the “Land of the Rising Sun” with Tyson, who had blown out Tony Tubbs in two short rounds back in March of 1988. Douglas, was best known up to that point for basically quitting against Tony Tucker in May of 1987 for the vacant IBF title. Douglas, talented if not mentally tough, was thought to be more cannon fodder for “Iron” Mike.
"I thought that Douglas was capable of making it a longer fight, if not a competitive fight, simply because he was so big and had a boxer’s style. Tubbs, you may recall in the first round, gave Tyson a lot of problems with his boxing," Merchant points out. "He had a real good jab but at the end of the first round, I think Tyson hit him in the side, the ribs and hurt him badly and the fight was over in the second round. So there was the memory, certainly, of Tubbs. This was supposed to be hardly a warm-up for the upcoming fight with Evander Holyfield. And most of the discussion was about Tyson and Holyfield."
During that stretch in Japan, there had been rumors and innuendos of Tyson sloughing off his training duties and a video even surfaced of him taking a flash knockdown in sparring from the hands of Greg Page.
"We heard some reports. Physically, he looked fit. I think he’s probably gotten in worse shape as the years have gone on," said Merchant, laughing. "I think he wasn’t in as bad a condition as some people suggest although, obviously, he wasn’t taking Douglas seriously and, as I’ve said before, when you don’t take an opponent seriously, you may turn him into a serious opponent. But there was so much turmoil in Tyson’s life, in general, that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he hadn’t been training seriously."
With “The Real Deal” and a rather subdued (to say the least) audience watching, from the opening bell, Douglas mastered Tyson with his jab and striking right hand. Time and time again, he touched Tyson with fast, hard combinations that snapped the champion’s head back. It was almost surreal to see Tyson, who came into the fight with a mark of 37-0, in any type of danger.
"I can recall as early as the second round, I commented that Tyson was getting hit with the kind of punches, consistently, that we’ve never seen him get hit with before," said Merchant. "So it was growingly apparent that something was happening here. But still, you expected the champion to assert himself as the fight goes on, if he’s had a rough beginning and maybe it was [all] along about them, that we started to see that this was serious. That we had to start believing our eyes."
But Tyson finally rallied in the eighth round, as he decked Douglas with an uppercut that floored the challenger from Columbus, Ohio. It was a moment that defined Douglas’ performance that evening. The guy who had packed it in before, in rough spots, gathered himself and fought on. However, there was controversy as promoter Don King and WBC President Jose Sulaiman argued that referee Octavio Meyran had administered a “long count.” Merchant says of that knockdown, "One, it was really clear that Douglas was capable of getting up at a much earlier count, if he had to. He was on his haunches; he was looking at the referee. He could’ve gotten up at five, six or seven and the whole idea that this was a ’long count’ scenario is entirely specious. But it’s become, I guess, a part of the legend for those who believe that Mike Tyson was invincible."
The most shameful aspect of this story is how King and Sulaiman attempted to change the fight into a Tyson knockout, arguing that his knockdown should have really been a KO, thus trumping what took place in the tenth frame.
"I’ve never seen anything as brazen. To overturn a knockout?!" Merchant said with a laugh, still in shock over King’s and Sulaiman’s actions. "There were lawsuits about this and I was called as a witness. It was an arbitration and I said, ’Look, this is just an example of some guys trying to win a fight outside the ring that they couldn’t inside the ring.’ And I asked Sulaiman, ’Do you know of anything like this in the history of boxing, where a knockout was over-turned?’ He said, ’Oh, sure,’ I said, ’Yeah?’ He said, ’ I’ll get back to you, I’ll let you know.’”
Two decades later, Merchant still hasn’t gotten his answer from the WBC dictator.
Douglas bounced back with a strong ninth round where he staggered a fading Tyson and then put him away in the tenth, on the strength of a combination that began with a blistering uppercut. If you close your eyes, you can just see the series of punches that accomplished what was thought to be impossible- knocking Tyson off his feet and eventually groping for his mouthpiece, as he was on his knees.
It was a bold exclamation point on a statement that Douglas had made all night long on Tyson. On this day, “Buster” was simply better than the one-time “Baddest Man on the Planet.”
"By that time, I don’t think we disputed the idea that the upset was in the making. When Tyson knocked Douglas down at the end of the eighth round, then the test was going to be what happened in the ninth round, said Merchant. “And the fact of the matter was that Douglas was fresh, that Tyson could not take advantage of the knockdown at the end of the previous round. Douglas had re-seized control and from then on, it looked inevitable. We didn’t know there would be a knockout. Tyson had taken a lot of punishment but the crowd that came to see Godzilla- and sat on its hands because Godzilla was getting beat up- they had the wrong Godzilla because it was a comprehensive beating by Douglas."
As Tyson was counted out by Meyran, Merchant got off one of his classic lines, "This makes Cinderella look like a sad story." When asked to rank where that quip stands, he says, "I don’t know, I’m not good at that sort of thing. I hardly know what I’ve said, much less ranking stuff. But given the amazing story of Douglas going into the ring, his mother having died three weeks before, the mother of his daughter having leukemia, his father had abandoned him. His father, Billy Douglas, was a really tough middleweight and light heavyweight. When Douglas didn’t perform well against Tucker, and so on, his father didn’t want any part of him.
"So here he is coming into Tokyo fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world, all of these personal tragedies and traumas in his life, suddenly galvanized. It was an amazing story, the kind of story that we are used to in boxing and one that gives real emotion to the stories behind the events we see."
In the immediate aftermath of the fight, Merchant conducted what he considers to be one of the most memorable post-fight interviews he has ever been a part of.
"It is," he admits, "because there was about a 20-second period, which is about two lifetimes in television, where nothing was said. I had decided that I would not talk to Douglas about the personal issues until we talked about the fight. But he was so emotional himself, about what he had just achieved and what it meant in his life, that he couldn’t talk. And he was broken up, his handlers wanted to take him back to the dressing room but he wanted to communicate. He wanted to let people know how he felt and I, maybe for the first time, realized fully [that] this is a show-and-tell medium and nothing I could do while he was trying to gather himself could show what all this meant to him [even] more than that. So I waited and I waited and I waited and I waited and I waited some more and finally, he was able to respond and he did. That was a moving moment on top of this ‘shot heard ’round the world’ event."
From World Series to Super Bowls to NBA Finals to Wimbledons to you name it, Merchant’s probably been on the scene for some of the biggest events sports have had to offer, either as a newspaper scribe or his duties on television.
Douglas-Tyson certainly ranks among his most memorable and enduring.
"The fact that I’ve had a lot of calls from all over the country to talk about that event 20 years later, which is very unusual, is an indication of how Tyson had an extraordinary impact in his time," he states. "That for that generation, he was going to be their Muhammad Ali, their standard bearer of great heavyweight champion and so on. They were genuinely in shock by seeing Tyson look like just another fighter and the fact that it still resonates is still fascinating."
It’s a rare occasion like this and the hope of witnessing the next Douglas-Tyson that keeps Merchant coming back for more.
"When I was a kid playing football, I loved practice and I loved being in the field before the game. And if you love it, whatever you’re there for, you love it. And occasionally, these surprises [like] Manny Pacquiao dominating De La Hoya, they just remind you of the possibility of being lifted up by somebody giving a performance that you could not have imagined.
"It’s one of those special occasions and markers that we have, as we look back and we look forward."
AGELESS WONDERS
On the most recent edition of “The Main Event,” I compared Bob Arum to Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno; both who are around the same age as Merchant. I asked Merchant, out of the three, who will last the longest?
"Well, my guess is that it will be Bob, since he’s the boss of himself. Paterno and I work for other people, although he is pretty close to being a god at Penn State- and rightly so," said Merchant, laughing at the thought. How long has Merchant been covering sports? "I knew Joe Paterno when he was an assistant coach," said Merchant, of “Joe Pa’s” days under Rip Engle in Happy Valley. "I mean, Penn State has had two coaches in about 70 years or so.
"So I would be the last in line there, but I’ll be happy to be in that company."
MY MEMORY
I vividly recall the memory of Tyson-Douglas, it was my senior year at Montebello High School and I was still living on Juarez Street in Montebello, in an area called Racquet Mountain where we had moved to, just a few years earlier. If I recall correctly, that night was also when the NBA Dunk Contest was taking place and since we didn’t have HBO so I was resigned to not seeing this expected blowout. I figured it was no big deal since Tyson was absolutely making a mockery of the heavyweight division and a guy with a history of quitting wasn’t beating this guy. But what I would do, since we had a “cable ready” television, where you could get scrambled versions of HBO and…uh…other channels you didn’t pay for, I would just get updates from there.
I think it was after the fourth round when Douglas had completely seized control of the fight and hit Tyson back after he had taken a punch after the round, when Lampley commented how Douglas was even winning the exchanges after the round too. I couldn’t believe my ears. So I quickly called up my friends who lived up the hill on Racquet Mountain, whose family watched all the fights (their father was a huge Tyson fan, as were their uncles) and I asked the older brother, Eric, “What’s going on in the fight?!” He responded, “Tyson’s getting beat!"
“What?!”
“Yeah, I’ll pick you up.”
Now this was the amazing part, to me; Eric lived up the hill about a mile or two away. But it seemed though, as soon as we hung up the phone, I could hear the honking of his horn in my driveway. Eric had to have come down that hill near the cross streets of Howard and Lincoln like the Dukes of Hazzard. Because I recall that, by the time we got back to his house, we had only missed one round. So thanks to Eric, I got to see the knockdown of Douglas, the ninth frame and then the climactic knockdown. To this day, it’s still among the most memorable nights of my life.
All my friends in high school were huge Tyson fans (And, of course, Raider fans. Hey, it was East L.A.). Being a devotee of Muhammad Ali, I took umbrage of all this talk of Tyson being the greatest heavyweight ever. I had told friends that I thought Tyson- who had become the youngest heavyweight champion ever during the early part of my freshman campaign in November of 1986- would lose before we graduated. Well, I was quickly running out of time and realistically, I thought maybe Holyfield would be the guy that would be my last hope.
Fast forward to that night, at a party where I had the pleasure of telling my friends, including Eric’s younger brother, Jason, who loved “Mighty Mike,” that Tyson had been stopped by Douglas. They couldn’t- or wouldn’t- believe me. It was unfathomable to them. But as they watched television and saw the sportscast from Jim Hill (who doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since 1990) breaking the news, complete with the old black-and-white photos as evidence that indeed, Tyson has been beaten, they couldn’t deny what I had been telling them. Nobody could quite comprehend what they were being told.
You really had to see it to believe it.
But as I look back, it really was an end of an era, not just for Tyson and Douglas (as neither would ever really be the same again) but for boxing, because I’m not sure that any fight or fighter today could have grasped the attention of regular high school students (and everyone else) the way Tyson did back in the late ’80s. Yeah, when Manny Pacquiao fights, certainly the Filipino constituency shows up en masse and when Oscar De La Hoya was in his prime, he was transcendent. But not to the degree of Tyson, who cut across all racial and cultural lines during his heyday. Whether you hated or loved him, when Mike Tyson fought, everyone paid attention.
Back then, he performed often (11 appearances total from the time he won the WBC title from Trevor Berbick to his bout with Douglas) and every time he did, it was the biggest day in sports. He truly was a cultural phenomenon that will never be seen again. You don’t have to believe me. Just think about these factors:
- He was brought up in an era when newspaper coverage of boxing was expansive. And being from New York, he had great coverage from highly influential scribes like Michael Katz, Michael Marley and Wally Mathews, who wrote about boxing several times a week.
- His early rise was broadcast on vast audiences on ABC on weekend afternoons.
- He was the last boxer to have a real national endorsement deal. Remember his Pepsi commercial that actually included his ex-wife Robin Givens and his mother-in-law, Ruth Roper? (You can insert your own punch-line here)
- Hip-hop loved this guy like no other. Acts like Public Enemy and The Fresh Prince (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t9SCHLRDoY) all paid homage to Tyson in one way or another. As the genre grew in popularity and respect in this era, he was certainly tied into it like no other professional athlete.
- In my opinion, Tyson was the last boxer that Sports Illustrated really cared about and put on their covers, which is still a great honor. The cover of him reaching for his mouthpiece in Japan with a headline that simply read “KO” is one that I still have in my possession to this day. And the following week’s cover featured Buster Douglas and his new heavyweight belt. Now, can you imagine back-to-back boxing covers on Sports Illustrated anytime in the near future?
- And lastly, he had his own video game. “Mike Tyson Punch-Out.” ‘Nuff said.
FINAL FLURRIES
So where does Dan Goossen go on April 24th? Oakland to see Andre Ward face Allan Green in the “Super Six” on Showtime or Ontario to see Chris Arreola battle Tomasz Adamek on HBO? Can he clone himself?...I really think ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” is off to a really strong start in 2010...I keep hearing that Telefutura is getting back into the boxing business. Let’s hope these rumblings come to fruition...This week’s edition of “The Main Event” featured Bob Arum and Glen Johnson...Is it already time for pitchers and catchers to report? Any questions or comments can be sent to k9kim@yahoo.com... You can also follow me at twitter.com/stevemaxboxing… You can now become a fan of Maxboxing at facebook.com/MaxBoxing…
