Just Like in the Movies

By RICHARD CORLISS

A come-from-nowhere pug gets a shot at the heavyweight title. His beloved mother has just died; the mother of his own son is suffering from a severe kidney ailment. His body is depleted by penicillin shots and antihistamines taken for a nagging infection. And now he must step into the ring against a champion who has destroyed every opponent with awful precision. The odds against an upset are so high that most Vegas casinos don't even lay down a betting line. But our plucky hero surprises everyone by carrying the fight for the first seven rounds. Then, in the eighth, he is knocked down and staggers to his feet at the end of an agonizingly long count. Somehow he rallies to reclaim dominance, and in the tenth round he crushes his foe to the canvas for an even longer count. Eight . . . nine . . . ten! The winner and new heavyweight champion of the world!

That's the way it went, as the lightly regarded James ("Buster") Douglas, 29, knocked out Mike Tyson, 23, in Tokyo last week, ending the champ's four- year reign. The papers called it "the biggest upset in boxing history," but they could just as easily have said cinema history: a story like this happens only in the movies. To be exact, it happens only in Rocky movies. Douglas' shocking victory over the previously undefeated annihilator provided all the improbable thrills of a Stallone fist film. And more. Rocky never got the benefit of a long count, so that his opponent could later complain, as Tyson did, "I knocked him out before he knocked me out." Rocky never had his championship belt stripped from him, as Douglas had, hours after the fight, when boxing authorities declared the title vacant pending a review of the Douglas knockdown.

And Rocky never ran into Don King, the Boss Greed of boxing promoters. King's electrified hair stood on end when he realized that Tyson's match with top contender Evander Holyfield, a huge payday slated for June, would now be a fight between two nonchamps. King soon came to his senses. He proposed a Tyson-Douglas rematch, with Holyfield to meet the winner and ageless challenger George Foreman lurking like a threat behind Holyfield. By midweek the boxing commissions had dropped their charade and acknowledged what every viewer knew: Douglas had won the fight. The underdog was the champ.

"I don't want them to stick me with Rocky," Douglas told David Letterman. Still, this mild man from Columbus is stuck with a hero's biography. His father Bill was a sparky middleweight who funneled his dreams into young Buster. Another inspirer, Buster's manager John Johnson, helped steer his fighter through recent family tragedies -- especially the death of his mother Lula last month -- and toward a bout with Tyson. Boxing savants expected it to be one more anonymous sacrifice to the Kong of sport. But Douglas had strength, stamina and grace. And he lacked what other Tyson victims have brought into the ring: fear of an "Iron Mike" mugging.

Like many a great fight, this was not always a good fight. It was not so much a spectacular display by the challenger as a mediocre one by the champ. Tyson looked stolid, muzzy, otherwise engaged. He stood around like a fire hydrant in black shorts, an easy target for Douglas' advantages of height (5 1/2 in.) and reach (12 in.). The champ threw few punches, and fewer of his lethal paradiddles -- left-right-left-right! -- that turn his victims' heads into punching bags and their guts to soup.

In the waning seconds of the eighth round, a Tyson uppercut with a lot of steam on it rang Buster's bell just before the timekeeper could ring his. Douglas collapsed and skidded on the canvas. Referee Octavio Meyran Sanchez glared Tyson into a far corner and began his count, so that Douglas had a few extra seconds to rise to his feet. He was still genuflecting at the count of nine, but he seemed ready to continue.

Two rounds later, Douglas returned the punishment, and then some, to Tyson: an uppercut followed by a sturdy combination that felled the champ. Another slow count could not save Tyson. He rose to all fours, grabbed for his mouthpiece and pathetically placed its end between his teeth, like a dazed dog with an old toy. The war was over. For Douglas, it was time to celebrate and mourn. In a TV interview, he told his dad that he loved him. Douglas said he won the fight "because of my mother, God bless her heart." And then the new undisputed heavyweight champ dissolved into manly tears.

In Columbus the citizenry prepared a triumph for a good fighter who knows how to be hard in the ring and human outside it. In Houston, Foreman said he was ready to dispatch all comers -- including Don King. And in Philadelphia, Stallone was shooting Rocky V. He must feel about his boxing movies the way John le Carre does about cold-war novels after the communist thaw: What do I do to top real life?

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York