James 'Buster' Douglas claims knocking out 'invincible' Tyson was 'dream come true'

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ANI London
Last Updated : Feb 20 2015 | 2:10 PM IST

Former undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion James 'Buster' Douglas has claimed that it was a dream come true when he caused the biggest upset in boxing by defeating the seemingly invincible Mike Tyson in 1990.

Douglas recorded a 10th-round knockout against the then undefeated heavyweight champion, Tyson.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fight, Douglas claimed that it's something he would always live with for the rest of his life, and branded it as a great accomplishment.

Douglas went into the fight in Japan's Tokyo Dome as the 42-1 underdog, and the result is widely regarded to be one of the greatest upsets in sporting history. The build up to the bout had not been a smooth one for Douglas, with personal problems dominating his preparation, the BBC reported.

However, Douglas claims that he used the build-up as inspiration. He said that his wife and he were going through some things, they were separated, and then the biggest thing was that his mother passed 21 days prior to the fight.

Douglas claimed that his dad and he weren't really seeing eye-to-eye with the decisions in his career. He added that there were a lot of things swarming around, but insisted that he was able to see beyond that, and say that with all of these things going on in his life, this has to be his time.

The former boxer claimed that it really made him focus and buckle down even more, because he just felt that he had seen beyond it, that there was something bigger on the horizon for him giving him the title shot at this time.

In the bout Tyson eventually knocked the challenger down in the eighth round but Douglas narrowly beat the count and found the strength to launch a counter-offensive. Halfway through the 10th, a Douglas combination put Tyson on the canvas for the first time in his career and the fight was stopped.

Douglas claimed that that was a dream come true, adding that it was like he had achieved the ultimate goal -becoming the heavyweight champion of the world.

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First Published: Feb 20 2015 | 2:02 PM IST

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