When James ‘Buster' Douglas sat Mike Tyson on his ample arse in Tokyo in 1990, he struck a blow for underdogs in every sport, everywhere. Unheralded and unfancied, Douglas was listed at 42/1 by some bookmakers against the Baddest Man on the Planet who, until then, had cut a swathe through the heavyweight division, mowing down opponent after opponent.

The fight was supposed to end not long after the seconds left the ring for the opening bell. But Douglas floored Tyson with a right in the 10th round that rendered the champ senseless. As he flailed around on the canvas, trying to regain his bearings, Tyson put in his mouthguard backwards. That was the signal for the ref to end the fight.

Off-the-wall results like that help to make sport the wonderful, entrancing, alluring, maddening phenomenon it is. The English Premier League aside, that unpredictability keep us tuning in and turning up, week after week, season after season, hoping the bunch of misfits that wears our club colours might one day ‘do a Buster'.

My own personal favourite in the underdog stakes belongs to the American super heavyweight wrestler, farm boy Rulon Gardner, who beat Russia's Alexander Karelin at the Sydney Olympics in what some believe is the greatest upset of all. Karelin was widely considered the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of all time, a man who had never lost in international competition over 13 years and who had not conceded a point in 10 years. Not one point.

It was a match no-one thought Gardner could win. But he did, 1-0, stunning a crowd that included IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, who had come to present Karelin with his fourth gold medal - a medal that was instead draped around the American's expansive neck.

There are other standout individual examples: John Daly won the 1991 US PGA Championship at Crooked Stick, in his debut year on tour, having been given a start as ninth reserve which meant he did not have time for so much as one practice round.

Australian Steve Bradbury, owing as much to good fortune as skill, claimed a gold medal in the short-track speed-skating gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics,