“The night he knocked out Tyson I was with my wife, Connie, at a dance at St. Mary’s Church in Franklin ... and I left her there,” O’Neill laughed. “She said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ and I said, “I’m going home to watch him.’
“She said, ‘He’s going to get beat,’ and I told her, ‘Well, then, he’s going to have to get beat in front of me.’ ”
When they fought in Tokyo on Feb. 11, 1990, Douglas was a 42-1 underdog to Mike Tyson, the unbeaten heavyweight champion who had so decimated everyone he’d met that he was considered by many to be the most invincible champ ever.
Ross Culver, the sports book manager for the Mirage in Las Vegas, summed up the bout for many when he said: “The fight reminds me of Secretariat running against a Clydesdale.”
O’Neill wasn’t convinced.
Although it had been in the world of hoops, not haymakers, he had seen Douglas more than hold his own night after night.
Before he knocked out Tyson in the 10th round and became the toast of the sporting world, Douglas played basketball for O’Neill at Sinclair.
“From the time I was 10 to about 15, I boxed as an amateur, but then I became strictly a basketball player and I loved the sport,” Douglas said when we spoke a while back. “I played at Linden McKinley when we won the state tournament in ’77 and were ranked No. 2 in the country.”
After graduating from the Columbus school a year later, he played a season at Coffeyville Community College, a basketball powerhouse in Kansas.
“I had the Davis twins from McKinley’s championship team, so I’d seen Buster play,” said O’Neill. “Then in late spring or early summer (of 1979) he shows up here. He said he wasn’t going back to Kansas because the guy he’d gone out there with had gone on to Minnesota.
“He wanted to come back around here and asked if I had any room. I said certainly, and he became quite a player for us. He was hard-nosed, but a perfect gentleman for us. He was just a nice person.”
Douglas was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, averaging 21.2 points and 10 rebounds per game, was named MVP of the 1979-80 season and made the NJCAA All-Region XII team.
Douglas remembers plenty from the year he spent at Sinclair.
“I lived in the Riverview Terrace apartments,” he said. “Dayton was kind of a tough town — there were some real gangsters around — but I was cool there. I remember I fell in love there with this girl from Prichard, Ala. Man, I was crazy about her, but then when I went back home, we drifted apart.”
After a season at Sinclair, Douglas was recruited to Mercyhurst College, but ended up giving up basketball to turn pro as a boxer.
“I knew his dad (Bill “Dynamite” Douglas) was in the game and influencing him to go that direction,” O’Neill said.
When he looks back at his Sinclair days, one thing the 51-year-old Douglas especially appreciates is O’Neill: “He was a good guy...and a good coach.”
Current Sinclair coach Jeff Price — whose 11-5 Tartans host Owens Community College (ranked No 20 in the nation) today — echoes Buster’s thoughts:
“Everybody always sees Mike Krzyzewski (Duke) and Roy Williams (North Carolina) on TV and praises them. But there are a lot of really great coaches out there at the small-college level who don’t get the recognition they deserve.
“Coach O’Neill is one of them. He’s still No. 1 among all Sinclair coaches in winning percentage. He was a great coach who had an impact on so many guys.”
After coaching at Belmont High, O’Neill started the basketball program at Sinclair in 1968. Over the next 12 years, he compiled a 203-106 record. After he retired from coaching in 1980, he continued to teach English at Sinclair for another 14 years and these days he serves as the starter at NCR Country Club.
This afternoon, the 76-year-old former coach and his most famous player will be honored at about 3:15 p.m. between the Sinclair women’s and men’s games.
Douglas, who lives with his family on a farm outside Columbus, will be given a framed version of his old No. 44 jersey with which he was presented at the annual Punchers & Painters celebration in downtown Dayton this summer.
Price said Douglas also will address his team in the dressing room before the game and then will be given a seat on the Tartans bench.
“If we’re getting outrebounded,” he cracked, “I just might have to put him in.”
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