buster douglas father

He's checking out his face, deciding who he is. For a few hours their dad would soak in the tub, and then, for a day or two, he would just lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. A year ago, his father had passed judgment in a newspaper: My oldest son, he said, is not violent enough to be a good fighter. . "Fight that sissy.

A win would have set up a fight with Tyson in August. Douglas turned his pain into motivation and pushed on towards the fight. Let the old man speak up. Lula Pearl was Sarah's daughter. The films in his head didn't help; the projector had suddenly stopped working. In his boxing career, Buster was always chasing the success his father was never able to achieve — but he had a temperament more like his mother Lula. Say "I love you" to this man? It all backed up on Buster in the summer of 1989.

Isn't that enough, doesn't that count?

Free because he finally knows the hardness and hunger are inside of him, not just his father. It wasn't thought—it was feeling. She would go to his apartment to scrub his kitchen. He was even chased by talk of being overweight his entire career, right up to the Tyson fight. God, Buster loathed being Bill Douglas's son, and yet, any minute now on that TV screen, Tyson was going to catch Buster with an uppercut, and Buster was going to … They sparred hundreds of rounds, Bill would tell people. In grade school, I came home crying one day.

Biggest fight of Buster's life to that point, the 1987 IBF title bout with Tony Tucker, and how had Buster spent the weeks before it? He watches his reflection flit and feint, watches himself try to make violence something light-footed and lovely. "He lost that day, a brutal fight—they stopped it when they shouldn't have. Tears started streaming down Buster's cheeks. He rushed to his mom's house. You almost had to hit a man like that to win his respect, to step out of his shadow. The boxer was himself. Three days before the bout, he came down with a heavy cold. The son's confusion rippled everywhere. Maybe this would do it. His eyes widen a little. But that only made him stronger. But when it got too out of control she would bring in my father and he would really lay the hammer down.". That night, Lula went over to Buster's house and he tried to convince her he'd be fine and that it was Tyson who should be worried. Buster would get the wintergreen to rub on his father's body, and his younger brother Robert would run the bathwater and get the ice. Hell, it was only every three or four months, just for a few minutes. Crack! Hoping that the idea of his dad would be enough, that he wouldn't need the flesh. If the fat stayed on the back of his neck, if he didn't run and spar like a lunatic, the way his father had before fights, and Buster still won—wouldn't that make him something more than his father? . "What's wrong with you?" Upon winning the title, Buster said he would stay in the snakepit for just two more fights—next week's bout in Las Vegas against Holyfield, for which he will earn a record-breaking $24 million, and a Tyson rematch. My mother being who she was just wasn't going to allow it. He was a big, sweet, passive kid, the kind who slept with his dogs and opened the door for you and told you to have a nice weekend. God, Buster loathed being Bill Douglas's son, and yet, any minute now on that TV screen, Tyson was going to catch Buster with an uppercut, and Buster was going to drop . His mom—the person he telephoned first thing every morning when he woke up—began having seizures and talking about dying. and loved her husband, Bill. "My mother got wind and my dad was at the kitchen table and my mum said, 'Billy, is this man an animal like they say?'" There was no more Bill in Buster's corner after the Tucker defeat, ever again. Before his father can be called to appear in a New York courtroom as a witness for King, an out-of-court settlement is reached. Everything has changed now. To be a fighter, you need to get rid of your daddy. The son puts the magazine down on the table and slowly rises. It became so confusing, the road to manhood, so cobbled with contradictions. When Douglas' mother heard of the fight with Tyson, she was concerned.

Bill's manager Bruce Trampler said Buster's lack of in-built aggression was an issue some feared would prevent him going to the next level with his boxing. A videotape is playing on the TV a few feet away. He starts throwing punches. Look, right there on the screen moments after the bout; listen, the son is saying it: "Dad, this one is for you! His father, now skull-shaved and still big-shouldered, looks up at him and nods.

He signed his autograph "Love & Peace, James Buster Douglas," then drew a happy face. "Don't open your traps again, or it's going to be bad.". His own family thought he was crazy to take on Tyson—he couldn't believe it, his own mom. I don't know. He had three days to mourn his mother's passing. He cocks his fist, scowls into the mirror, punches harder. He's a psycho. Figure out that riddle, Buster: To get your daddy's love, you need to be a fighter. Douglas took a shot at the vacant IBF World Title in May 1987 against Tony Tucker. . The father moves closer to the mirror and lets another punch fly.

He could hardly find words for why. He backs away from the glass, flinching as he rips the Band-Aids off. He would see a rope that dangled from a tree above a ravine and hear a voice inside him say the strangest thing: The championship of the world is on the line—will you swing across? Dad on the scales in his underwear before the Matthew Franklin fight in '77 in Philly, his shoulders rolling up and down as if filled with some electrical current. As a kid, when his dad came home from a prowl on the streets and his mom screamed and his dad snarled back, Buster would disappear. A native of Columbus, Ohio, Douglas was a contender in the middleweight and light-heavyweight divisions during the 1970s, fighting such opponents as Bennie Briscoe, Marvin Johnson and Matthew Saad Muhammad. "Boxing was just the only way he knew of feeling close to his daddy." "I made that boy, I started him, I taught him everything he knows," Bill would snap at J.D. In front of millions of people, replayable millions of times at the push of a button—doesn't that count? He would see his dad's trainer, Ed Williams, telling little Buster to stand back, to let this man work out whatever it was that had hold of him. would scream. "Why didn't you do something to that boy?" Only his dad had lived these things. He wasn't going to be a pro basketball player. He would see Bill charging back into the locker room in 1970 after the Don Fullmer fight, his shiny body snorting and winging punches as if it didn't know the match was over, boxing one more round, two more rounds, three. It wouldn't be that easy.

he said.

Screaming at a sparring partner over a few bucks. "I want it," he says, "like I want food." But Buster says he is free now, at last. On the mornings in Franklin Park when Buster thought he really wanted to be heavyweight champ of the world—when his legs began to pump and his arms ripped the air and the sweat in his eyes made all the birds and trees he liked to gaze at go away—he would feel something come over him. She was just tired, her body was tired. Heavyweight champ of the world. "Let's do it again," he said to J.D. Buster's eyes flicker toward him. ', "She said, 'Well I don't want him to fight, my baby is in trouble.'".

That's why Buster can't just carve his dad out of his life. He was a couple of dozen pounds overweight and wanted to quit boxing, and it scared him to death knowing that he would have to drag that kind of body and heart into a ring against a heavyweight. I'm mean.". And on the day after the fight, there was his father on NBC telling millions more, "James is one of the most outstanding.

J.D. But that reflection in the glass—it flitted and feinted and flicked that jab so nice. "This is the most trouble Tyson has ever been in!". Mike Tyson has been knocked out! Bill, in sweatpants and a T-shirt, sits on the sofa watching the fight. She would hug him and stroke him and fix his dinner. He couldn't think of anything else to do—so he did it.

"If you had your father's heart with your ability," Uncle J.D. ", Sometimes it came back to Buster, that day when he was 16 years old and he dusted off the stereo that was hardly ever used, took it from the cellar and set it up in his bedroom, only to hear his old man shout from below, "Bring it back!". Sadly, Douglas got his motivation from the death of his mother at 46 — just 23 days before the biggest fight of his life. Ever since he was nine or 10, the first thing he would think when he was scared or hurt was, No, this can't be, I'm Bill Douglas's son. In the middle of it all, wringing her hands, her health deteriorating, was Lula Pearl, who loved her brother J.D. His old man is out on the road with a wool cap tugged over his head and combat boots on his feet, pounding four miles to his job at an auto parts factory, snorting and growling and tearing up the dawn with punches as he goes. Buster resented him. "I've got a headache." He had let little conflicts with his wife, Bertha, build and build; he had never seen his dad open up and talk to Lula Pearl. He won his first title in 1986 and just kept winning, knocking out contender after contender. A father who would take away his troubles. I love you!" He's a killer. Douglas continued to fight journeyman fighters over the course of next year. There was only Bill in Buster's head. Carve the old man out of his life? Bill would return a few days later with a swollen, purpled head that made it hard to know whether he had won or lost, and Buster's mother, Lula Pearl, would mmm-mmm that same mmm-mmm, and the house would fill with a silence. Bill slapped J.D. "Never scolded, never punished. McCauley, and his manager, John Johnson, told the kid that to be a boxer, he needed to get rid of his daddy. Yes, here was an odd thing, another facet to the riddle: If Buster got rid of the fat, became hard and hungry and heavy-weight champion—wouldn't that make Bill something less than his son? "Whippin' on that suckah," Bill mumbles.

Which of them, the father or son, is going to bring it up first? Additionally, moving towards his academic qualification, Buster received his high school degree from the Linden McKinley High School. "Douglas comes back with a left and a right! Let the old man squirm. She had been found dead on the floor, at age 47, of a stroke. But each time they parted, Buster never really had it out with Bill, never quite confronted him. Hug this man? His old man enters the factory bathroom.

"I accept Him," said Buster. "Buster was very much like his mum, he favoured the mother and he didn't have his father's inner drive to be a fighter," Trampler said. "And you know what? His son is former world heavyweight champion, James "Buster" Douglas. "Run, Buster!" He needs to throw his arms around his father and tell him, "I love you," before it's too late, before the old man dies and maroons Buster with all that. . Dad throwing that right at Carlos Marks's bloodied mouth in '72, perfect form, right shoulder just where it should be. All the remorse, the resentment, the ripples. "You have to kill him to keep him down." ', "The family was divided. Every obstacle in that boy's path, my family took out of his way." His aunts were telling him to forget this boxing nonsense, to get a job. Suddenly, Buster would find himself up off his hotel bed, winging and snorting, feeling the strength rush over him. Even in his 20's, Buster would run to his mom with every problem, every bruise. Sometimes Buster would run a few hundred yards and slow down again. "Hit him, honey!"

And he hesitated, his breath coming hard, his eyes filling with tears, and he waved his hand at the camera and shook his head no, no, no and said, "I can't say any more. Hell, Buster wasn't a fighter; he hated it when people called him that. Bill (Dynamite) Douglas is 50.

'If you don't go out there and stand up for yourself, it's going to be me and you.' If you say that you'll accept God into your heart, He'll take all the burdens off your shoulders.". Five or six times a year he would watch his father pack up the big red Samsonite suitcase and black gym bag, put on the wide-brimmed derby and the dark shades and walk out the door alone.

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