knees wobbled a fraction. In the corner afterwards, Bright began talking very fast indeed. The third round was about even. But in the fourth and fifth, Douglas kept connecting. Tyson could do nothing. His eye started to close. The huge, half-full stadium was eerily quiet the silence broken only by the cries of Douglas’s small claque: “He didn’t come to fight.”

In the seventh, a point Tyson had reached in only six of his 37 previous bouts, the champion finally roused himself. There was a hard left then a combination. But Douglas only smarted. Then he moved out of trouble again. And in the eighth he swept back. Two rights from Douglas hit home. Suddenly, the champion was on the ropes it appeared to be all over, and then,as if from a hole in the ground, it came: a right uppercut that landed flush on his tormenter’s chin. It was Douglas who went down.

When the count failed to come, many of us assumed the fight had already been stopped. Next, we thought at least this was the turn of the tide, and that Douglas was finished. But, in the ninth he surged onwards suggesting he might indeed have winked when he was down. Again, Tyson was on the ropes. Any other man would surely have crumpled. Bright, by now, was simply open-mouthed.

And by the next round the unbelievable had become the inevitable. Right, right, left, right, left. After 83 seconds, Tyson was down and out. Amid the shambles in the ring, a Japanese official, as usual,