Bruce Prichard on How Buster Douglas Beating Mike Tyson Screwed Up The Main Event III, Scrambling to Replace Tyson With Douglas

– On the most recent Something to Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard recalled how Buster Douglas’ upset win over Mike Tyson led to Douglas replacing Tyson as the referee on The Main Event III in 1990. Mike Tyson was signed to great fanfare to be the guest referee for Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage for the NBC show, but lost to Douglas in a result no one saw coming just two weeks before on February 11th, 1990. That resulted in Tyson backing out of the Main Event appearance, forcing the WWE executive team to scramble in order to try and get Douglas.

Douglas ultimately agreed and refereed the Hogan vs. Savage match, counting the pin for Hogan. Savage got in Douglas’ face and teased attacking him, ultimately taking a couple of punches from Douglas and hitting the mat as a result. Highlights from the discussion, and the full podcast, are below:

On learning that Buster Douglas beat Tyson: “I will never forget the night it happened. Because I was in Houston. And the whole team — myself, Kevin Dunn, Kevin Quinn, Larry Rose and those were the guys who put the syndication together. And we had gotten everything out early because we had to get it out early this one week, because of The Main Event coming up. And I came home, I was at my mom and dad’s house. And I walked in and my mom says, ‘Vince has called and this guy Kevin keeps calling.’ And I get in, and I call Kevin first. And Kevin says, ‘Yep! Tyson lost.’ I said, ‘What? What do you mean, Tyson lost?’ Because it wasn’t that big of a fight, people weren’t really paying attention. I had almost forgotten that Tyson was fighting that night, because we had done our voiceovers ahead of time talking about ‘another successful victory for Mike Tyson in Tokyo last night’-type s**t. And I said, ‘What do you mean, he f**king lost?’ He said, ‘Yeah, he f**king lost, man.’ I said, ‘Well — f**k!’ We did voiceovers, we are promoting on shows that were going out to air the next weekend, we’re promoting this s**t. And so he said, ‘Yeah.’ And he was in Baltimore at home, and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll call you back. I’ll let you know.’

On talking with McMahon about it: “And I called Vince, Vince answered the phone, says ‘Hold on, I’m on the other line with Don King in Tokyo.’ And put me on hold, came back I don’t know, 20 [to] 30 minutes later and says, ‘Okay! We need to fix the shows, we need to pull back everything that’s gone out, fix the shows, get new voiceovers. All hands on deck, where are you?’ I’m like, ‘I’m in Houston.’ He said, ‘All right! I’ll see you tomorrow at the studio.’ [laughs] I said, ‘Vince, everybody’s all over. Everybody left for the weekend, we got everything done early.’ He said, ‘All right. I’ll see you all tomorrow [laughs] at the studio!’ And I called Continental Airlines, got on a plan, and everybody else did the same thing.”

On having to replace Tyson with Buster Douglas after their bout: “Everybody was there on a Sunday, we did voiceovers. And we didn’t have anything yet. So we all met, said ‘Okay, what are we going to do?’ Which, we didn’t know other than Mike wasn’t coming. Mike was not — we were like, we tried to convince him, it’s like ‘Okay, this just happened, I understand they’re emotional, they’re not thinking straight. But tomorrow cooler heads will prevail.’ And now it was definite. Mike’s not showing up. And we were like, ‘God damn, you know, it’s an opportunity to be in front of people and vow revenge. Whatever the hell you want to do. But this is a great forum. And they didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

“At that point, we started trying to get ahold of Buster Douglas’ people. Well, they were on a plane from Tokyo heading back to Buffalo, New York. So Basil DeVito got on a plane to Buffalo, New York. Met them coming off the plane. And said, ‘Hey, Mike Tyson was scheduled to be the guest referee in a match with ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan on NBC. Well, Tyson doesn’t wanna do it and frankly, we want the guy that knocked Mike Tyson’s ass out.’ That intrigued them, and they went into a room, discussed it. Basil came out, ‘I got him.’ And we proceeded with Buster Douglas. The man that knocked out the Baddest Man on the Planet will be there to referee the Mega Powers live on NBC. And it all happened that quickly.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.