In This Corner

There are no second acts in American lives.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

The guy probably didn't know any fighters; hell, some of them have made a lot of dough on second acts. Some have even made a science of it. Muhammad Ali, Alexis Arguello and, most recently, George Foreman all tampered with the clock to wring a few more bucks from man's cruelest sport. Why the hell not? There hasn't been anything new in boxing since Mike Tyson bludgeoned his way to the top. Through 37 mostly inferior—some downright laughable—tin cans, he became the world's ruling heavyweight. He also became a walking domestic disturbance.

Then came reports from Tyson's training camp that the lowly Greg Page had knocked the champ on his ass in a sparring session. Tyson used to pride himself on spending sparring partners like quarters; for his $1500 a week, the average sparring partner could usually expect several trips to the canvas and maybe a ride in an ambulance. Still, the press took it lightly, mumbling some la-la about slipping or Page's landing something flush.

A week before Tyson's knockdown, a different thing shook the life of another fighter: Lula Pearl Douglas died of a stroke in Columbus, Ohio. Twenty-three days later, her son James became heavyweight champion of the world.

"My mom didn't want me to fight Tyson; she was afraid for me. She'd been sick for a while ... and she was worried about me." James "Buster" Douglas tears up for about a second. His best friend, Rodney Rodgers, looks away. We're sitting in the sunken lobby coffee shop of the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago. I look back to Douglas. He has regained the steely calm he has worn all day.

"I told my mother I wasn't worried (continued on page 166)In This Corner(continued from page 101) about Mike Tyson; I told her I'm the son of Bill and Lula Douglas."

•

John Johnson looks like Rip Torn, complete with the devilish eyebrows and deep reptilian eyes. He is Douglas' manager. Johnson's idol is Woody Hayes, with Jesus Christ running a strong second. Still, he is likable enough, considering the various species of vermin that inhabit the world of boxing. He feigns congeniality better than Wayne Newton. There is still plenty of the West Virginia coal country left in his voice—Red Jacket, West Virginia, land of the U.M.W. and hardscrabble poverty, black-lung disease and football.

"I'm a coach; my license plates say Coach J." When Johnson mentions Hayes, he blows a kiss skyward, toward heaven. No shit. He tells me of the great sense of hope he gets from Douglas.

"I walked up to Don King at the weigh-in in Tokyo. I kinda smiled at him, looked over Tyson, and then I told him, 'We gonna kick his fuckin' ass. He's too little.'" Johnson gives me a smile. He doesn't like King, but he tempers his remarks so as not to do irreparable damage. Well, almost. "I ain't worried about him; besides, his ass belongs to us now."

Figuratively, it's an interesting statement. Since the "long count" nonsense (Douglas was knocked down and given a standing eight count that King contended was a few seconds too long), the tables have turned a bit. King tried to blow smoke up the collective ass of every governing body in boxing. With his Houdinilike way with the English language, he had damn near stolen back the heavyweight championship. He had José Sulaimán and the rest of boxing's alphabet boys looking squirrelly at one another, wondering if they'd all seen the same fight. Johnson is still sore about that. "That fuck! He comes into the greenroom at HBO the night after the fight and he's lookin' at us, kind of laughin', so I walk up to him and I tell him, 'You'd better not be laughin' at James Douglas, 'cause if you are, buddy, you are history.'" Johnson smiles big and wide like a hungry alligator. "James Douglas is wearing the belt, my man."

•

As fights go, it wasn't even close. Douglas chased Tyson down like an errant kid brother; for the first time in Tyson's career, he was the hunted. It wasn't so much a fight as it was a simple old-style ass kicking; not so much science as passion, more will than skill. Tyson looked sluggish and a tad fat, and he ran into a willful, emotionally charged fighter who meant to do more than survive the meanest pachyderm of all. As he'd said a week before, he meant to knock out Tyson.

•

The first scheduled stop for Douglas today is a grammar school, Edward Jenner Elementary, in the Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago's Near North Side.

The entire way there, Douglas looks out the window of the white stretch limo, adding one-word or two-word comments to whatever conversations are going on. The conversations are about image-making stuff. What little entourage Douglas has is certainly tight-lipped and wary of the press, putting out one message: Douglas is a nice guy. Not a wife beater or a head case like his brooding predecessor. So far, Douglas has made all the right public moves; he has done practically nothing but charities like Farm-Aid; he has visited orphanages and has done all other manner of good-guy events short of kissing babies. I ask Douglas why he isn't copping to the commercial-endorsement gravy train. Johnson leaps in to answer that question: "This is what gives him inner peace, my man."

By this time I realize that Johnson is a PR man's wet dream. Only in America can a man who looks like a bad velvet painting of Elvis and possesses the heart and soul of a pit bull manage the heavyweight champion of the world. However, it is refreshing to see one professional athlete who resists—or at least tries to resist—hustling product.

It also could be that the Madison Avenue sharks are waiting to see how Douglas fares against Evander Holyfield or, better yet, Tyson again before they unlimber their wallets. Douglas will beat Holyfield, and then he will beat Tyson. Again. And if old man Foreman gets a crack at the championship belt, he'll beat him, too. In fact, Foreman might even be the most interesting of the three fights. How do I know? The night of the fight, I called around to all the bookies I know, trying to lay a sucker bet on Douglas (even though I was sure he was going to lose). The odds were 42–1. You do the math: Had I been able to find a bookie who would have taken the bet, I would have made myself some considerable cake. The weirdest thing happened, though—no one would take my dough, not even my regular book, a guy who takes money from every kind of social leper.

I took this as a sign from God, because any time your regular bookie passes up 50 easy bucks, it's time to check his pulse. Or something big and unexpected is going to happen.

•

Douglas grew up in Columbus, Ohio. His father, once a middleweight contender touted as Bill "Dynamite" Douglas, was always around to make sure the future champ walked the line. James's uncle J. D. McCauley was also involved in boxing, as a trainer. James's grandfather hung the tag Buster on him, and from the age of ten, he was boxing. He also garnered praise as a basketball player, eventually earning a scholarship to Mercyhurst College. "I played basketball all day and the girls all night," he says.

Perhaps the most stabilizing factor in his life was his mother. She would offer helpful criticism of his fights, often telling him to quit, knowing full well it would goad him into doing better. The Douglas household was neither rich nor poor. "I always had plenty to eat; the refrigerator was always full. I never went without in my life. My parents sacrificed a lot for me. They made sure I got an education."

His father also made sure that he got the best training for the ring. Douglas refers to him as one of his boxing idols, along with Muhammad Ali. When I asked why his father walked out of Douglas' camp before the Tyson fight, Johnson suggested I not bring it up again.

•

Cabrini-Green stands like an ominous field of tombstones. The buildings are colorless cement boxes with broken and boarded windows. This place is a standing monument to urban poverty and the economic slavery that its residents live with day in and day out. It suffers some of the worst gang violence in Chicago.

We pull into Cabrini in the limo. This is the first time any heavyweight champion has ever visited Jenner Elementary.

Douglas is led to a small, packed auditorium by state representative Jesse White and is greeted by absolute pandemonium—children standing, some on their chairs, clapping, hooting and cheering. Douglas cracks his first smile of the day. He takes his time and moves his eyes over the crowd as if recording every face. After some brief comments by White—most of which are about staying in school and away from drugs—Douglas is introduced. His comments are interrupted by a small black voice: "Why you whoop Mike Tyson?"

After that, Douglas' veneer of calm is gone. He smiles ear to ear. Johnson leans over to me: "This is why he loves being the heavyweight champ."

Douglas is at ease with the children. In this setting, he looks more like a popular teacher than like a fighter. He is wearing a conservative gray pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit, a white shirt and a tie with a pin. The little girls seem especially smitten, staring up at him with wide, longing eyes and pursed lips. The boys, however, swagger up with home-boy bombast, all puffed out, as if to mirror the champ and seek his notice. Douglas gives each child his attention. He answers the kids' questions, no matter what they ask, in a deliberate, measured voice that assures them he is listening. His PR man is nervous about time, looking at his watch and gently reminding the champ that he has other stops to make, but Douglas doesn't budge until each kid has an autograph or a handshake. One of the last boys reaches up and gives Douglas a shot on the jaw, a pugnacious gesture; Buster looks him over evenly and tells him he wouldn't do that again. The boy retreats with a grin wide enough to paddle a canoe through; he then quietly confides to a friend, "I just whooped the heavyweight champion of the world and he didn't do shit."

•

On our way out of Jenner Elementary, Douglas spies a boy sitting in the principal's office. The kid has a nervous look on his face, the kind that lets one know that somebody's in deep shit. Douglas puts his hand on the kid's head and says, "Stay out of trouble, 'cause I'm counting on you." T?e boy nods his head and assures Douglas that Jenner Elementary will suffer no more of his brand of terrorism, for the rest of the day at least. Down the hall Douglas looks over at me. "I've been in that doghouse myself; nothin' to it."

•

Douglas' career hasn't exactly been the stuff legends are made of; he has lost to some bums, including the slow-as-a-postcard David Bey and the wholly unspectacular Jesse Ferguson. "I should have killed him," Douglas says. "What a dumb fight."

He also fought to a draw with Stefan Tangstadt, the 207-pound herring from Norway. With the possible exception of Tony Tucker, Douglas' résumé reads like a Who's Who of heavyweight bumhood that includes such luminaries as Percell Davis, David Jaco and the aptly named Jerry "Wimpy" Halstead.

A closer look will give one a better idea why Douglas was ready for Tyson. His two prior fights were with Trevor Berbick, whom Tyson had reduced to an unconscious form of break dancing, and Oliver McCall, a mostly unknown but powerful heavyweight from Chicago—and a former sparring partner of Tyson's. Both fights were ten-rounders and neither was a cakewalk. Douglas had to know that the only kind of fighter who would have a prayer against Tyson would have to (A) be taller and (B) have reach, lots of reach, to avoid Tyson's body attack and left hook. Douglas won this fight by counterpunching, the only way anyone can beat Tyson. Tony Tucker nearly had a handle on him a few years ago. For the first four rounds, he threw long jabs and stayed away from the alley fight long enough to actually back Tyson up with a long uppercut. Had Tucker stayed with his own fight, he'd have outpointed the Brooklyn bully and we would have a very different heavyweight picture now. But Tucker decided to dance Tyson's dance and got swallowed whole.

Douglas went at Tyson with will, giving him all the credit and caution one would afford a small obstacle; it was as if he had reduced Tyson to nothing more than a detail of the larger picture.

Tyson's corner also helped him lose. While Iron Mike's eyes were swelling up like large purple plums, his corner was looking for ice. They had forgotten to bring the hunk of cold steel that reduces swelling. This is a little free advice for Tyson: Get Kevin Rooney back and lose Don King. Old hurricane head has done you no solids, and he doesn't hang much with Larry Holmes anymore, in case you haven't noticed.

•

A little before one o'clock, we enter through the back door of Walter Payton's America's Bar in Chicago's River North district. The place is a Yuppie nightmare of red, white and blue, complete with waitresses in cheerleader outfits and late-Seventies disco ambience. We are led upstairs to the office, where Payton appears with two management toadies. One of the managers is the talker, full of mechanical warmth. Douglas cuts him short to tell him that he had trouble gaining admittance to one of Payton's clubs in Columbus, Ohio. He curtly adds that he wasn't the only black who had trouble getting in. Payton glares at the managers. Douglas adds, "It was some big motherfucker named Tony." Payton makes a slow kicking gesture while staring the managers down. They get the message. The poor bastards start a verbal backpedal so fevered that their heads sweat. Payton and Douglas smile at each other.

After Douglas finished signing boxing gloves for a charity auction, we move downstairs to the dance floor/dining room for an informal press conference. The place is a madhouse. Seemingly every sportswriter, gossip columnist and media scrounge in Chicago is here.

Payton and Douglas move through the crowd like old pals, squaring off from time to time when a photo op arises, both media savvy enough to yuk it up a bit so it makes good copy; but mostly, they're just two guys on top of the world and enjoying it. Douglas has a one-of-the-guys aplomb that serves him well in this crowd; he is at ease, perhaps more so than Payton, who has incredible charm and polish that seems more like armor; Payton is gracious without being ingratiating. I figure it is the way he survives this crowd. Douglas exudes an accessibility that is disarming. He is articulate, and he seems perfectly happy being who he is.

Douglas is signing everything from magazines to speed bags. He is markedly different from the way he was at Jenner Elementary. He is polite but curt. One mousse victim with a bad tie asks him to sign something to the effect of "To a fellow Buckeye"; Douglas looks up at him and writes, 'James 'Buster' Douglas, love and peace," with a smiling face, his standard autograph.

During all of this, Rodney Rodgers watches with a plaintive smile. Rodgers is every bit as big as his famous friend. He rarely says anything unless he is talking with Douglas. One can tell immediately that he is not a hanger-on; when he and Douglas speak, they tuck their heads together like two schoolboys sharing a dirty joke. They've known each other since childhood and often communicate with gestures only the two of them understand. It's nice to see a fighter with a real friend rather than "his people," the endless entourages that inhabit the half-world of celebrity. While Rodgers and Douglas take a break to eat, both laugh and joke as though unaware of their surroundings. In the middle of their meal, some Yuppie sticks his face between them and starts babbling. One sharp look from Rodgers ends the intrusion.

•

Back at the Fairmont: For the first time all day, I have Douglas alone. Well, almost. Rodgers is there, but he is so quiet that I barely notice him. I ask Douglas about Evander Holyfield.

"He'll come right at me." He pauses. "I got something for him."

He's right. Holyfield doesn't have much in the way of a bag of tricks, but he is always in superb condition and he is deceptively fast. Although he's not a natural heavyweight, moving up in weight hasn't taken anything off his punch. It should be a good fight and Douglas should win. He is bigger and stronger. If Holyfield pulls an upset, he will be only the second light-heavyweight fighter in boxing history to move up in weight and capture the heavyweight title; Michael Spinks was the first, in a bout with the seemingly comatose Larry Holmes.

Holyfield's corner could get stupid, too. Lou Duva, his trainer, recently cost Meldrick Taylor his title in a bout with Julio Cesar Chavez. Taylor, ahead on every card for virtually every round, came out for the last of a 12-round bout and, at Duva's prodding, mixed it up with Chavez and got himself knocked out with two seconds left in the fight. Smooth move, Lou. So, as far as brains in the corner go, Douglas is well ahead with his uncle J. D. McCauley.

I mention to Douglas that no one expects him to beat Tyson twice.

"I hope they keep on thinking that; their doubt is what fueled me the first time. I don't seek their approval, see. I want them to doubt me. I need no one's approval."

I decide to go on to another topic: Don King.

"He's a smart man."

I almost choke on my coffee. I remind the champ that this is the man who tried to steal his title.

"And he was smart in the way he tried to do it.... Hey, he is a character."

I can't believe what I hear. Everything I've seen in Douglas today has led me to believe that he is decent, moral, coherent and, above all, acutely intelligent.

"It was business, not personal."

I want to stay on the subject, but it seems there's nothing else to say. All of a sudden, the heavyweight champion of the world stands straight up and his face breaks into a beaming smile. I look over my shoulder and automatically stand up at the same time. Muhammad Ali walks in, throwing play jabs at Douglas. I'm speechless as the champions embrace, Douglas as clearly in awe as I am. The Greatest. We are introduced and I just nod, because I can't get real words out. I can only play back the silent movies one remembers in the presence of history: Clay standing over Sonn? Liston; Ali knocking out George Foreman in the sweltering heat of Zaire; Clay spouting poetry; Ali embodying it; Ali coming back for Leon Spinks; rope-a-dope; Joe Frazier falling; Tyson groping for his mouthpiece.

It dawns on me that the authors of the two greatest upsets in the history of boxing are sitting across from me, and it's odd to me how much Clay–Liston and Tyson–Douglas seem like distant mirrors of each other.

After that thought, I feel like an intruder. I want to leave them alone and let them share in each other's history. Just then, Douglas shoots me a hard look.

"That man is still sharp as a tack; you make sure you write that." We stare at each other, and I nod.

•

After Ali retreats to Douglas' hotel room, I ask Douglas if he has done any shopping yet.

"I'm gonna get a boat ... a Caddy in the water ... me and my son are gonna go fishin' ... and then I'm gonna buy a team."

I ask him if he wants to be an entrepreneur.

"A little-league team."

Douglas returns to the subject of his mother. "Here I am, man ... king of the world ... and my mother isn't here to see it." Douglas gets quiet for a second.

"Two or three fights, tops ... Holy-field, Tyson and maybe Foreman ... then I'm done ... start livin' ... boxing is a means to an end."

As we finish up, John Johnson interrupts, telling me to get lost, telling the champ that "you don't keep Muhammad Ali waiting." That was the truest thing he had said all day.

I shook hands with the heavyweight champion of the world, the son of Bill and Lula Douglas.

"It is refreshing to see one professional athlete who resists—or at least tries—hustling product."