Four Kings

by George Kimball

  Panama Lewis had always been a mysterious figure around the boxing netherworld. I’d first encountered him when he came to Boston with Vito Antuofermo before his second fight against Hagler in 1981. A year later he had famously worked Pryor’s corner against Arguello at the Orange Bowl. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth rounds, when an aide had handed him the water bottle, HBO’s cameras caught him saying, “No, not that one! Give me the other bottle, the one I mixed!” Pryor revived and won the fight. The suspicious bottle was never found.

  The boxing commission in Miami was notably lax, and Pryor did not take a drug test after the bout. Artie Curley, Pryor’s cut man in the Arguello fight, insisted that the bottle had contained peppermint schnapps “to settle Aaron’s stomach.” (In a home video shot in the dressing room before the fight, Pryor could be heard repeatedly burping.)

  In any case, this time Panama had been caught red-handed. Resto’s win was stricken from the books and changed to No Contest. Lewis and Resto were convicted on charges of assault, possession of a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to influence the outcome of a sporting event. Both were banned from boxing for life. Lewis was sentenced to six years, but served only one. Resto spent two and a half years in prison.

  Although prevented from working corners, Panama Lewis continues to pop up in gyms all over the world as an “adviser.” I still run into him from time to time.

  Billy Collins wasn’t that lucky. His injuries included a fractured orbital bone and permanent eye damage that prevented him from boxing again. Nine months later, after a night of drinking, he drove his car off a bridge in what his father described as a suicide.

  After a stopover in Miami, Roberto and Felicidad Duran, accompanied by Bob Arum and his then-wife, Sybil, flew back to Panama. A crowd estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000 of his countrymen lined the parade route from the airport to Panama City.

  “Colonel Paredes had sent his private plane to pick us up in Miami,” recalled Arum. “Remember, this was the first time Roberto had appeared in public in Panama since before the No Mas fight, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. The pope had visited Panama just a few months earlier, and there were more people there to greet Duran than had come out for the pope. After New Orleans these people had been ready to lynch Duran. He’d been an outcast in his own country. Now he was bigger than ever.”

  When, a month later, the Duran-Hagler fight was announced for that November, 1,500 spectators, most of them Duran supporters, turned out for the press conference in New York.

  “Here’s a fight worth $50 million,” marveled Budd Schulberg, “that wouldn’t have been worth 50 cents six months ago.”

  The New York announcement was followed by the obligatory press tour, with Hagler and Duran, each in a private jet, flying around the country to promote the fight. I couldn’t tell you what happened on Duran’s plane, but when Leigh Montville, Nick Charles, Rich Rose and I flew with Hagler and the Petronellis on the Caesars jet, the poker game commenced at dawn, an hour out of Hyannis, and ended in Los Angeles that night, with somewhat inconvenient interruptions for press conferences in Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver along the way.

  Duran-Hagler was originally slated for the old Dunes hotel, but logistical problems moved it across the street to Caesars Palace. The Dunes remained a player in the promotion, and most members of the press corps were assigned rooms there. Caesars needed every available room for the anticipated influx of high-rolling customers.

  Hagler and Duran were guaranteed $5 million apiece, with the prospect of doubling that if Arum’s predictions of the largest closed-circuit sale in history proved accurate.

  At twenty-nine, Hagler was at the top of his game and considered the most capable champion in the sport. Duran’s recent heroics notwithstanding, the oddsmakers initially established Marvelous Marvin as a 3-1 favorite, but there were those who disagreed.

  When Sports Illustrated chased down Freddie Brown, Duran’s old trainer likened the upcoming fight to Hagler’s frustrating draw against Antuofermo in their first fight four years earlier. Freddie had worked the Mosquito’s corner that night.

  “Vito got right on top of him, pressing him, facing him, making him fight,” Brown told the magazine. “Hagler doesn’t like that. That’s why Vito gave him all that trouble−and Duran’s a better in-fighter than Vito. He’s as strong as Vito. Duran’s a harder puncher and not as easy to hit. I got to pick Duran.”

  Hagler embarked upon his traditional Spartan existence in Provincetown, where he prepared for the fight with sparring partners Bob Patterson and John Ford. Duran, in keeping with his reclaimed celebrity status, trained in Palm Springs, where his principal sparring partner was a New Jersey southpaw named Charles Boston. Each arrived in Las Vegas a week before fight night and polished off his training at Caesars.

  Shortly after the camps had relocated to Vegas, word emerged that Luis Spada had challenged Pat and Goody Petronelli to bet him $100,000 of their own money, even-up, on the outcome of the fight.

  As preposterous as it was−had Spada actually been disposed to bet the fight, he could have walked over to the sports book and gotten nearly 4-1 on the same wager−it was reported in several newspapers, and the somewhat bewildered Brothers Petronelli called a press conference of their own to announce their acceptance of the bet.

  They never collected. The ploy turned out to have been another misguided publicity stunt cooked up by Arum’s press agent Irving Rudd.

  The biggest non-fight news of the week came when Caesars Palace announced that it had signed eighty-seven-year-old George Burns to a ten-year contract.

  At his workouts Duran sparred wearing a new helmet-type headgear with slits for the eyes. (A prototype recently developed by Everlast, it looked like one of Darth Vader’s discards.) Duran, who had been badly cut in his fight against Nino Gonzalez two years earlier, was only too happy to try it out.

  One afternoon I watched Duran spar four rounds with Boston from beneath the Star Wars headgear and filed this dispatch:

  Time and again Boston would leap off his feet and lunge as he aimed a right hook at Duran’s head, only to watch helplessly as Duran sidestepped and caught him coming in. It was an impressive performance, but a somewhat superficial one. If Marvin Hagler decides to fight off balance all night on Thursday, then Duran will hit him, too, but one is fairly confident that Hagler’s footwork will be considerably nimbler than that of Charley Boston.

  Once Duran finished his workout that day, the headgear was lifted from his face and he noticed Steve Wainwright, seated next to Bo Derek, in the first row of spectators.

  Hagler’s lawyer wasn’t exactly incognito, but when Duran spotted the Barrister he shouted, “Spy!”

  “You see that? ” he demanded, in English. “Now go to Hagler and tell him!”

  Five days before the fight, the two combatants were doing early-morning roadwork on the Dunes Golf Course when they nearly ran into each other somewhere near the fourteenth green. Hagler not only refused to acknowledge Duran, but averted his glance, an incident that−with some encouragement from Spada, who quickly spread the tale−was misinterpreted by some as a sign that Duran had intimidated Hagler. By way of explanation, I wrote in the next morning’s Boston Herald:

  Hagler and Duran have shared the stage at innumerable press conferences over the past few months, including one in Los Angeles barely a week ago. They are staying at the same hotel, and, less than an hour apart, training at the same facility at the Caesars Sports Pavilion. Recently, Hagler in particular has taken to avoiding Thursday night’s adversary like a wary bridegroom on the day of the wedding: You wouldn’t necessarily call it superstitious, but then again you might.

  Since arriving in Las Vegas the middleweight champion has, save for two trips to the mountains to walk in solitude, closeted himself in his room, where he spends most of his time conjuring up malevolent thoughts about Roberto Duran. With the fight just four days away he has, for the most part, withdrawn into his customary pre-fight shell.

>   Hagler and Duran weren’t the only fighters to avail themselves of the Dunes course that week. One morning our foursome teed off as the first group of the day. When we finished the seventeenth hole three and a half hours later, we found the eighteenth tee occupied by Juan Domingo Roldan, the Argentine middleweight who was fighting on the undercard. Roldan was throwing a medicine ball around with members of his entourage.

  It was the WBA’s turn to administer Hagler’s title defense, and the organization had initially appointed a slate that included South Africa’s Stanley Christodoulou as referee and Guy Jutras of Canada, Ove Oveson of Denmark, and Yosaku Yoshida of Japan as judges.

  A contretemps ensued. The WBC was enforcing a ban against South African participation in its events, and although the organization theoretically had no say in the administration of Duran-Hagler, Jose Sulaiman successfully urged the Nevada State Athletic Commission to reject Christodoulou on anti-apartheid grounds.

  The WBA’s second choice as referee was Isidro Rodriguez of Mexico, but the Petronellis objected on the grounds that Duran was half-Mexican. Rodriguez probably didn’t help his cause: Shortly after he checked into Caesars, the first phone call he made was to Duran’s room. He, too, was dismissed.

  The alternatives were even more unpalatable. Jutras was, at least for a few days, moved from judge to referee, but a quick check of his track record revealed that he had been suspended by the WBA for a year after his abysmal performance as referee in a Eusebio Pedroza-Juan Laporte featherweight title fight, in which he had overlooked fifty-eight separate fouls, including several low blows, on Pedroza’s part. Jutras’ work that night had been so egregious that the New Jersey commission had overturned the result, although the WBA allowed Pedroza to retain his title.

  The other options weren’t much better. Oveson was regarded as even more inept than Jutras, and Yoshida was not even certified as a referee. A simple solution might have been to use one of Nevada’s excellent referees, but the WBA rules at the time precluded assigning a referee of the same nationality as one of the contestants to a world title fight.

  “We want a referee who’ll be strong and in control of the fight,” said Goody Petronelli. “Duran has been known to do this job [Goody demonstrated by thumbing himself in the eye] and he’s been known to throw a couple down here, too. [This time Petronelli pointed to his family jewels.] If [Jutras] had warned Pedroza and penalized him right away, all that stuff might have stopped.”

  “It’s difficult enough to prepare for Duran without worrying about the referee, too,” argued Hagler’s trainer. “You can’t protect your groin and your head at the same time.”

  Hagler seconded the notion that Duran’s tactics bore watching.

  “Duran is a dirty fighter,” said Marvin, “and he’s gonna get more dirty when he finds himself in trouble. He’ll try to do anything he can to win. I just hope we’ll get a good referee who’ll watch him.”

  “Dirty fighter? ” Duran seemed wounded by the mere suggestion. “Hagler can no say anything. He use his head like it is a third hand. I am a cleaner fighter than Hagler.”

  After several days of wrangling, the issue was resolved. It turned out that Christodoulou, by dint of his ancestry, could claim dual citizenship, and after his Greek passport was overnighted to Las Vegas, it was announced that the fight would be refereed by Stanley Christodoulou, of Greece.

  The restoration of Stanley the Greek appeared to placate everyone concerned. Four years earlier, Christodoulou had worked Hagler’s fight against Norberto Cabrera in Monte Carlo, and had done an excellent job, at least in the eyes of everyone save Howard Cosell.

  “When I think about that first Antuofermo fight,” said a relieved Petronelli, “I’d be even more worried if these were Nevada officials.”

  “I’m not looking for an edge,” said Hagler. “I’m just looking for a fair shake.”

  Hagler liked to say he put himself “in jail” to prepare for a fight, but his room overlooking the outdoor swimming pool at Caesars hardly resembled a cell. A full-length mirror stared down from the ceiling above the canopied four-poster bed, and you got the impression that an enterprising maid cleaning up after a succession of Caesars’ fun-loving patrons could probably retire after a year’s work just from the proceeds of the cocaine she swept off the floor.

  It was a far cry from the Provincetown Inn. When I visited him at Caesars early that week, I took one look around and laughed.

  “If this bed,” I told Hagler, “could only talk.”

  For Hagler this was all a new experience. He’d fought in Vegas before, but not as the champion. He’d fought for million-dollar purses, but not for one that might approach ten million. He’d fought his share of formidable opponents, but this would be the first time he faced a bona fide legend, a sure-fire future Hall of Famer.

  “You know,” he told me that day, “Duran is a very gutsy fighter. He’ll fight anybody, and I admire that. Guys like Hearns and Benitez and Leonard−if I hadn’t been the middleweight champion they all would have been up here. Instead, they’ve all been sitting on the fence like a bunch of vultures, waiting for me to get old or get beat or retire, and wondering who’s gonna be the fool to go against Marvin Hagler first. Whatever you say about Duran, at least he wasn’t afraid to fight me.”

  As he prepared to go into battle Hagler traditionally tried to convince himself that he absolutely detested an opponent. Demonizing Roberto Duran, who was about to turn him into a multi-millionaire, was apparently a stretch.

  “Well, he is a bad sport,” said Hagler. “You never see him give credit or congratulate an opponent after a fight.”

  Two days before the fight Caesars hosted a press conference. When Hagler and Duran posed for photographs they had to be pulled apart after Manos de Piedra waved a menacing fist under Hagler’s nose and grunted, “We fight now? ”

  Duran then retreated to a safer distance, where he pantomimed winding up for a bolo punch. This might have been for the benefit of Ray Leonard, conspicuously seated in the audience a few feet in front of the dais.

  Hagler seemed amused by Duran’s shenanigans.

  “And I thought the man couldn’t speak English,” he said.

  That Duran’s posse had returned to near-full strength was evident at the weigh-in, where Caesars security guards and Las Vegas police were overwhelmed once the snake-dancing procession reached the Sports Pavilion.

  Duran checked in first, and weighed in at 156 1/ 2 . Hagler was just a pound heavier, but it was the lightest he’d been since the Hamsho fight in Chicago.

  Spada had allowed Duran to bring his wife Felicidad along to training camp, and she had shared his quarters in Las Vegas. Bertha Hagler, on the other hand, almost didn’t make it to the fight.

  Along with 180 other fight fans, Hagler’s wife and his mother, Mae Lang, had been booked on a charter flight due to leave Boston’s Logan Airport at 8:10 that morning. When the passengers arrived, they were not allowed to board the aircraft. It seemed that the airline broker had failed to make a final payment to the charter company.

  Eight hours and $50,000 later, the plane was allowed to depart, and the undercard was in full swing by the time the Brockton contingent arrived at Caesars.

  Lest it prove a distraction, Hagler was not informed.

  “Marvin is a dedicated fighter,” Mae Lang told the Boston Herald’ s Lynne Snierson. “We didn’t even let him know about this. We never tell him anything before a big fight, and we certainly didn’t want to give him anything to worry about this time.”

  In the undercard’s opening bout, Luis Santana, who a dozen years later would win back-to-back disqualifications in WBC title fights against Terry Norris, knocked out Jesus Gonzalez in two.

  Eddie Futch–trained Freddie Roach, who had won the New England featherweight title on another Hagler undercard (Obelmejias I, in Boston), fought undefeated New Mexican Louis Burke in a rematch. The result was the same as their first fight: Freddie was once again outpointed−at least in the ey
es of the judges. Roach, who would go on to become a two-time Trainer of the Year once his fighting days were over, saw his record drop to 32-5 with the loss, and told the Herald ’s Rich Thompson afterward, “If I went out and lost that fight, maybe I might get out, but I didn’t lose the fight. I live in Las Vegas, but I’d get a better break if I fought him in Las Cruces.”

  In other undercard bouts, Freddie’s bantamweight brother, Joey Roach, fought to a draw with Manny Cedeño, and an up-and-coming lightweight named Charlie “White Lightning” Brown won a decision over Oklahoman Frank “Rootin’-Tootin’” Newton.

  The most noteworthy event to take place on the supporting bill came in Juan Domingo Roldan’s bout against Frank “The Animal” Fletcher in the co-feature.

  Roldan was a ruggedly built middleweight who, by 1982, had advanced to the top spot in the WBA rankings. He was little known outside his home-land of Argentina, and Arum, aware that a Hagler-Roldan fight would be a tough sell, had repeatedly delayed his mandatory challenge by offering step-aside money and featured spots on four consecutive Hagler undercards.

  Arum’s reasoning was twofold. If he was lucky, Roldan might get beat. And if he didn’t, at least the exposure would render him more familiar to American audiences by the time Hagler finally had to fight him. Roldan, who a year earlier had never fought outside Argentina, had since performed on Hagler bills in San Remo, Worcester, Providence, and, now, Las Vegas.

  Roldan dominated the opening rounds of his fight against The Animal, and in the third he caught him with a picture-perfect left hook that sent Fletcher flying, his body parallel to the canvas, out of the ring and into the arms of a startled ringside cameraman. The referee, Carlos Padilla, ruled that Roldan had preceded the punch with a shove and discounted the knockdown.

  In the sixth, Roldan landed a left followed by a devastating right to the cheekbone that knocked Fletcher into oblivion. Padilla didn’t even bother to count.