Thirty-six years ago today, on February 11, 1990, the impossible happened inside the Tokyo Dome. James “Buster” Douglas, a 42-to-1 underdog with four losses on his record, knocked out the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, Mike Tyson, in the tenth round. It wasn’t just the biggest upset in boxing history. It remains, to this day, one of the most stunning results in the entire history of organized sports.

The fight was supposed to be a tune-up. A quick payday for Iron Mike on the road to a mega-fight with Evander Holyfield, which had already been signed for that summer in Atlantic City. Tyson was 37-0 with 33 knockouts. The man who had gone 13-0 with 13 knockouts in Atlantic City — demolishing everyone from Larry Holmes to Michael Spinks on the Jersey Shore — had his previous outing last just 93 seconds against Carl “The Truth” Williams. HBO’s Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley expected “another 90-second annihilation.” When Associated Press reporter Ed Schuyler was asked by Japanese customs how long he’d be working in the country, he laughed and said, “Oh, about ninety seconds.”

Nobody took Douglas seriously. Nobody except Douglas himself.

A Champion Unraveling

What the world didn’t fully grasp at the time was that Mike Tyson was already coming apart. The departure of trainer Kevin Rooney — the last link to Cus D’Amato’s system — had stripped away the discipline that made Tyson great. His replacement team of Aaron Snowell and Jay Bright lacked the experience and authority to keep the champion focused. Tyson’s personal life was in chaos: the ugly public dissolution of his marriage to Robin Givens, Don King’s tightening grip on his career and finances, and a lifestyle that had veered dangerously off course.

Singer Bobby Brown would later reveal in an interview on Questlove Supreme that he and Tyson had stayed up all night partying with women in Tokyo the night before the fight. When Brown urged him to get some sleep, Tyson waved him off: “Bobby. Listen. Buster Douglas — he’s an amateur! I could beat him if I didn’t sleep for five weeks.”

That arrogance would cost him everything.

A Challenger With Nothing Left to Lose

On the other side of the ring, Buster Douglas was fighting with the kind of desperate purpose that can’t be manufactured. Just 23 days before the biggest fight of his life, his mother, Lula Pearl Douglas, had died of a stroke at the age of 46. The mother of his 11-year-old son Lamar was seriously ill. His marriage had recently fallen apart.

Douglas had promised his dying mother he would beat Mike Tyson. She was one of the only people on earth who believed he could do it.

The fighter who walked into the Tokyo Dome that night was not the same Buster Douglas who had quit against Tony Tucker in 1987, who had been stopped in ten rounds in his only previous world title shot. This was a man carrying grief like fuel, channeling heartbreak into the performance of a lifetime. When he stepped through the ropes, it was written on his face: he was ready for war.

Ten Rounds That Changed Boxing

From the opening bell, Douglas did something no one had done to Tyson in his professional career — he outboxed him completely and confidently. Using his 12-inch reach advantage to perfection, Douglas pumped a ramrod jab into Tyson’s face round after round, following it with sharp right hands that snapped the champion’s head back. Tyson, without Rooney’s guidance, abandoned the peek-a-boo defense and head movement that had made him so difficult to hit. Instead, he stood flat-footed, loading up on wild hooks, looking for one big punch to end it.

By the fifth round, Tyson’s left eye was swelling shut. Larry Merchant told the HBO audience it was the most punishment they had ever seen the champion absorb, adding memorably: “Well, if Mike Tyson — who loves pigeons — was looking for a pigeon in this bout, he hasn’t found him.”

Then came the eighth round — the moment that should have ended Douglas’s dream. Backed onto the ropes, Tyson uncorked a thunderous uppercut that sent Douglas crashing to the canvas. The Tokyo Dome held its breath. Millions watching on HBO braced for the inevitable. This was where Buster Douglas was supposed to fold, just like he always had before.

But Douglas rose. He beat the count at nine, and the bell saved him seconds later. In obvious frustration at his own momentary lapse, Douglas pounded his fist on the mat. He wasn’t done. He had made a promise.

Douglas didn’t just survive the ninth round — he seized it. He weathered Tyson’s desperate assault and then turned the tables, staggering the champion along the ropes with a vicious combination that had Tyson holding on for the first time in his career.

And then came the tenth.

Douglas measured Tyson with six unanswered jabs, then detonated a massive right uppercut that buckled the champion’s legs. A crushing left hook followed, sending Tyson’s mouthpiece flying into the lights and his body crashing to the canvas. The image that followed — Tyson on all fours, groping blindly for his mouthpiece, trying to stuff it back into his mouth as referee Octavio Meyran counted over him — remains one of the most iconic and haunting images in sports history.

At 1:23 of the tenth round, it was over. James “Buster” Douglas was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Tyson had suffered the first knockdown and the first loss of his professional career — in the same round, on the same night.

The Aftermath

Don King immediately protested the result, citing what he claimed was a long count on Douglas’s knockdown in the eighth round. The WBC and WBA initially withheld recognition of Douglas as champion. But the outcry was universal — Douglas had won the fight fairly and decisively. Within days, the sanctioning bodies relented.

Douglas’s reign, however, would be brief. He showed up for his first defense against Evander Holyfield that October at 246 pounds — 15 pounds heavier than the night he shocked the world. Holyfield knocked him out in the third round. Douglas retired, ballooned to nearly 400 pounds, and nearly died from a diabetic coma before launching a modest comeback in 1996 that fizzled out by 1999.

Tyson’s trajectory was even more tragic. He fought four more times before being convicted of rape in 1992 and sentenced to six years in prison in Indiana. He served three. Upon his release, he regained portions of the heavyweight title but was never the same fighter. The aura of invincibility that had defined him — the mystique that made grown men tremble at press conferences — had been shattered on the canvas of the Tokyo Dome, and it never returned.

Tyson himself acknowledged as much when he retired after losing to Kevin McBride in 2005, telling reporters: “My career has been over since 1990.”

Why It Still Matters

Thirty-six years later, Tyson-Douglas endures because it represents something fundamental about boxing and about sports — the idea that on any given night, the impossible is possible. That preparation, heart, and purpose can overcome talent, power, and reputation. That a 42-to-1 underdog, fighting through unimaginable grief, can walk into the ring against the most feared man on the planet and walk out as champion.

The upset has been immortalized in Sports Illustrated (“Rocky Lives!”), referenced in film and television, and even inspired a song by The Killers on their Wonderful Wonderful album. Brandon Flowers wrote it about fatherhood and vulnerability, saying the childhood memory of watching Tyson fall shaped his fear of his own children seeing him fail.

But the real legacy of Tyson-Douglas isn’t cultural. It’s personal. It lives in every underdog who steps into the ring believing tonight could be their night. It lives in every fighter who has suffered loss and heartbreak and used it as fuel instead of an excuse. It lives in the promise a son made to his dying mother — and kept.

February 11, 1990. The night Buster Douglas shook the world. Thirty-six years later, the ground still hasn’t stopped trembling.