We took thousands of tickets on Douglas at $5, $10, $20.” This bit didn’t make the final cut of the article, but Vaccaro told me, “The biggest bet on Douglas was $1,000 at 37/1, he won $37,000. That’s how it got reported immediately after the fight, and the number stuck.īut it’s not quite true that Buster was a 42/1 ’dog. What we typically hear is that Douglas won as a 42/1 underdog. Next guy bet $93,000 to win $3,000 at 31/1 … People thought it was like, ‘Come pick up your money in a couple hours.’ It got to 42/1 if you wanted to bet on Tyson.” This guy figured he’s going to put up $54K and pick up $56K a minute after the fight started. I had a guy bet me $54,000 on Tyson to win $2,000. Within probably an hour and a half I had the first bet. Jimmy Vaccaro was the Mirage race and sports book director at the time, and his was the only casino in Vegas that posted odds on the fight. My slight hesitancy was due to the fact that “42-to-1” doesn’t mean exactly what people think it means. (Apparently the folks at ESPN felt the same way.) I had some misgivings about the headline we chose, “42 To 1,” but my editor and I agreed that it was an attention-grabber. In 2015, for the 25th anniversary, I wrote an oral history of the Douglas-Tyson fight for Playboy, interviewing 20 figures associated with the event, including both boxers, one casino magnate and reality TV host who would soon launch a bid for the presidency, and two Las Vegas bookmakers. But here’s the simple truth:īuster Douglas was not, at any point in the lead-up to the fight, a 42/1 underdog at any sportsbook. It’s a minor point, admittedly - more a matter of semantic nitpicking than of exposing major historical inaccuracies. I won’t know until tonight whether the film clarifies the widespread misconception about where the 42-to-1 odds came from and to whom they applied. I haven’t seen the doc yet, so I don’t know if it does or doesn’t dig into the specifics of the numbers in its title. The documentary is about quite possibly the most singularly stunning upset in sports history, James “Buster” Douglas’ 10th-round knockout of Mike Tyson in Tokyo on Februto claim boxing’s heavyweight championship. It’s appropriate, in this year of sports betting legalization and massive expansion, that ESPN would release a film with gambling odds so front and center. Tonight, ESPN premieres a documentary in its acclaimed 30 For 30 series titled 42 to 1.
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