James “Buster” Douglas, who scored perhaps the greatest upset in sports history when he knocked out Mike Tyson to win the heavyweight boxing championship, and then ate himself out of the game, was battling back from a diabetic coma Tuesday.
Douglas, who retired as soon as he lost the title to Evander Holyfield eight months after winning it in February 1990, was reported “doing fine” by his father.
“His sugar count was way up,” said Billy “Dynamite” Douglas, a former boxer himself, after returning to his Columbus, Ohio, home. “It’s something he didn’t know he had, diabetes. This caught him by a big surprise. I think it also had something to do with a reaction from some medicine he was taking for a sinus infection. But they got the sugar count down again and he’s conscious. He’s going to be all right.”
Buster Douglas, 34, had been reported in “poor condition” by WBNS-TV in Columbus, “slipping in and out of a coma,” according to an unnamed relative.
“He’s sitting up now, talking and recognizing people,” his father said Tuesday night.
But where parental pride reported the former champion weighing about 265 pounds, others in Columbus reported Douglas probably was still between 350 and 400 pounds.
John Johnson, Douglas’ estranged former manager, said, “It’s really sad. It’s very difficult for me to sit in my office and look at pictures of what he used to look like.”
Douglas weighed 231 1/2 pounds when, as a 42-1 underdog in the lone Las Vegas casino taking action on the fight, he knocked out Tyson in Tokyo. He was at 246 pounds, however, when he lost the title in three rounds to Holyfield.
He weighed close to 400 pounds, guessed Ron Katz, a Top Rank matchmaker, a little more than a year ago when Douglas showed up in Atlantic City as manager of a Columbus junior lightweight, Andre Cray.
“I did a triple-take when I saw him,” Katz said.
“I remember saying to him, `Out of respect, you were heavyweight champion of the world, and for your own health, you’ve got to get in shape.’ “
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Douglas finished his career with a record of 30-5-1. He used some of his winnings to build a community center near the Columbus neighborhood where he grew up.