Legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum was not in Japan when Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas fought at Tokyo Dome in February 1990. When Douglas scored a 10th-round knockout in one of the most shocking upsets in boxing history — the image of Tyson on the canvas searching for his mouthpiece has reverberated through the years — Arum was watching the fight at a restaurant in Las Vegas.
Like most, Arum did not make the trip to Japan in part because no one gave Douglas even a puncher’s chance of beating Tyson and the fight was not expected to be much of an event. So he watched it unfold on a big screen TV instead of from ringside in Tokyo.
That day 34 years ago was the last time the famous venue hosted boxing. The sweet science, however, returns to the Big Egg on Monday with a card headlined by a title fight between undisputed super bantamweight champion Naoya “Monster” Inoue and challenger Luis “Pantera” Nery.