Mike Tyson<\/a> was regarded as one of the biggest stars in sport and was undefeated at 37-0, reigning as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.<\/p>\n\u2018Iron\u2019 Mike was then matched up against James \u2018Buster\u2019 Douglas, who was a huge 42-1 underdog going into their first meeting at the Tokyo Dome on February 11, 1990.<\/p>\n
In the opening rounds, it became apparent that Douglas wasn\u2019t fearful of Tyson, despite him being deemed as one of the scariest fighters of all time.<\/p>\n
However, after fighting an extremely confident fight, Douglas was knocked down to the canvas in the eighth round after he backed Tyson up against the ropes. Fortunately for him, though, he was able to make it back to his feet.<\/p>\n
And then in round 10, the unthinkable happened. Douglas knocked Tyson down for the first time in his career after landing a flurry of four punches.<\/p>\n
The feared heavyweight was unable to make it back to his feet, and Douglas scored what is still considered to be the biggest underdog win in sports history.<\/p>\n
It was at that time when Pacquiao had an epiphany. After years of being bullied for being poor, \u2018Pac-Man\u2019 realized that he could turn things around after watching Douglas score the win.<\/p>\n
In his autobiography that he wrote in 2010, Pacquiao claimed that Tyson\u2019s loss to Douglas \u2018changed his life forever\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew without a doubt I would become a fighter. I knew that the underdog can, and often does, win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pacquiao still targeting his return to boxing<\/p>\n
At 46 years old, \u2018Pac-Man\u2019 returned to professional boxing earlier this year when he took on Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight title.<\/p>\n
The fight ended controversially in a majority draw, and Pacquiao failed in his attempt to become one of the oldest world champions ever.<\/p>\n
Despite that, Pacquiao is targeting a return to the ring in December, with his promoter Sean Gibbons having revealed that Rolando Romero is a frontrunner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manny Pacquiao decided he wanted to pursue a career in boxing after Mike Tyson suffered one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6100,7879,101,16061,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-172366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-manny-pacquiao","tag-mike-tyson","tag-sports","tag-throwbacks","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2086285091.jpg\")
Photo by Kaku KURITA\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesMike Tyson\u2019s loss to Buster Douglas changed Pacquiao\u2019s life \u2018forever\u2019<\/p>\n