I Am Duran

by Roberto Duran

  I had no interest in learning English. All I know in English is some street slang I’ve picked up over the years, and even now I can’t write it very well. The same goes for reading, which I’m not very good at, either, just as I was never interested in business. I was a fighter: I was paid to fight. That’s who I was and what I did. The rest I left to Eleta and Flaco Bala and, later, my promoter Don King. I don’t even remember getting paid for my first championship fight!

  And now I was in New York to fight Huertas and make people remember Roberto Durán. Manhattan was busier than any city I’d ever been in, and I knew that here I was a nobody. “The next time I come,” I told myself, “they’ll know who I am.”

  We trained outdoors in the heat of Brooklyn. People would crowd all around the ring just to watch me sparring and skipping. They brought me some sparring partners from Panama and I beat the crap out of all of them. Some days, I had to get out of the ring quickly because the canvas was so hot my feet felt like they were on fire. Thank God I didn’t get any blisters. Every day I trained harder and harder. I wanted to leave my mark, and I wanted to put Panama on the map. For too long, other countries had walked all over us.

  The day of the weigh-in, a Cuban woman in our camp said, “Come on, I want to show you something,” and took me for a walk. Even though it was steaming hot, everyone was running around the city like crazy. All the car horns were blaring, there were street vendors selling hot dogs—I loved it: New York was my kind of city and I wanted to make it my home. But what got me excited most of all were the different ice creams being sold on the street. (I told you I was still a street kid.) So many colors and flavors—they reminded me of home and where I came from. After the fight, and the end of the crazy regime I was on to make weight, I’d be able to have one. There was something magical about that moment, thinking back to El Chorrillo and dancing in the streets for spare change—and now walking around the greatest city in the world, about to make my debut in the United States. I’d left the hotel at lunchtime but didn’t get back until five, so taken was I with the city.

  “Are you crazy?” said Eleta.

  “Stop worrying,” I said. “When that bell rings, I’m going to knock him out, and after that I want some ice cream and some steak.”

  We were fighting on the undercard of the Ken Buchanan–Ismael Laguna World Boxing Association lightweight title fight. It was going to be a big night, the biggest night of my life so far, for sure. But there was one problem, and that was Huertas and his weight. He thought he was going to fight at 138–140 pounds, but the promoter switched it to 135. When I set eyes on him, he looked very muscular, clearly over the limit. Sure enough, he didn’t make weight. Eleta told me a couple of pounds didn’t matter. “I want you to fight this guy, Cholo. The world will see you. You are fighting in the boxing capital of the world, Madison Square Garden!”

  On the night of the fight I came in wearing a shitty robe and old boxing shoes and I hadn’t shaved in three days. But the important thing is that my hands were strong and fresh, and it was over before some people got to their seats. The first bell went, and the mistake Huertas made was to attack me, coming at me hard, trying to knock me out. He was big and strong and thought he could frighten me, but he opened himself up. About a minute into the fight I tagged him with a right and then a left—bing! bing! bing!—sixty-six seconds, he was done. He just lay down. And stayed down for a long time. Even I was surprised how quickly it was all over. Red Smith of The New York Times wrote that I “used only a minute or so to separate Benny Huertas from his intellect” and, in doing so, “won a rapturous following.” “The undercard . . . produced one fighter of special note,” The Ring magazine wrote, “who will have to be watched as a future lightweight champion and definite current threat. His name is Roberto Durán.”

  After the fight, Eleta took me to the ‘21’ Club: “There’s a party for you, Cholo,” he said. I was dressed in a white suit, ready to have a good time. “Do you want some champagne? You’ve earned it.”

  “What’s that?” Till then, I’d drunk only beer and whiskey.

  I liked it—got a little tipsy. But I was a little down in the dumps, too, until eventually Eleta asked me what was wrong. “Well, it’s just that the Cuban lady said I’d be able to eat some ice cream in as many colors as I wanted, and now we’re going back to Panama tomorrow and I haven’t had any.”

  “That’s your problem? Wait a minute!” He called someone over. Sure enough, the guy came back with a bunch of flavors. Vanilla, chocolate, mamey, guanabana, I scarfed them all. I was so stuffed, I thought I was going to explode.

  A girl asked me to dance, but suddenly my stomach started churning and making embarrassing noises—glub glub glub . . . glub glub glub. I’d had way too much ice cream, and that champagne wasn’t helping. The girl touched my stomach, and then I lost everything—and I mean everything. Chuleta! There was a big stain all the way down my white suit. I was panicking, walking backward, not knowing what to do. Que cagada, coño! Damn, that’s fucked things up!

  Back at the hotel I put those pants in the wash and kept rubbing and rubbing and rubbing until the chocolate-colored stain came out. And I managed to wear that same suit back to Panama!

  I also went back to Panama with a new nickname, which was to stick with me for my whole career. Eleta always called me Cholo; some people called me Rocky, after Rocky Graziano, the American boxer who was famous for his knockouts, and for several fights I even wore a robe with ROCKY printed on it. But it was thanks to Plomo that I ended up with a better name. Bam! I’d knock somebody out with a right, and Plomo would say, “Look, I told you he hits harder with his right hand!” And then the next fight I’d knock somebody out with a left, and Plomito would say, “See—I told you so! He hits harder with his left!” So Alfonso Castillo, one of the top sportswriters in Panama, came up with the nickname “Manos de Piedra.” Hands of Stone. Not Mano de Piedra. Manos—both hands. “Whoever he hits,” as Castillo put it, “goes down.” He began to use the nickname in his columns, on TV, and it spread like wildfire. Everyone was using it.

  When we got back to Panama, Eleta moved me out of Chorrillo: there were too many gangs, too many cantinas, in the area. He got me an apartment nearer to him in Caledonia; my neighbors were a mix of middle-class and poor people. It was pretty basic: a bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, and a small balcony. But Eleta had overlooked the fact that it was opposite a bar, and all the way down the street were more bars, like La Montmartre, Lo Que el Tiempo Se Llevó, Rincón Romántico—all places I soon loved to hang out in. Around the corner were even more places where they played music and I’d go to dance. New York had given me a taste of fame and the good life and I wasn’t going to stop enjoying myself just because of training. Eleta would get tough with me—“Remember when I left you in prison?” he’d say—but I was a man now, twenty years old. I could do as I pleased.

  There was a girl in Caledonia whose mother sold lottery tickets in the neighborhood. Her name was Felicidad and she was then fourteen years old and still in school. She’d get out of class at four in the afternoon and walk home, and her mother would give her the money she’d earned from lottery tickets to go get food for her brothers and sisters. There were six of them in the family, but her mother was still able to put food on the table for them every day.

  Felicidad didn’t like me at first; her cousin Ana was in love with me, but Felicidad would tell her not to pay me any attention, because she thought I was a womanizer, that I had too many girlfriends and liked to party too much. But one day I saw Felicidad walking down the street and called out, “Whoa, slow down, blondie! You’re going like a train!” And then I asked her out. “Fulita, let me take you out to dinner tomorrow.” She said yes, though she was worried because her mother was very strict. She told me to meet her at the Don Bosco church: tomorrow, January 31, was the day of Saint John Bosco.

  The next day, then, we went to a restaurant, and
then on to the Lux Theater for a movie about killer rats, and then another movie. Fulita had permission to stay out only until seven or she would be punished, and by now it was very close to her curfew. I persuaded her to forget about it and come dancing at the Morocco bar. After that, we went to a hotel, where we could be alone, and by the time we left there, it was eleven at night . . .

  We had a great time together, but Fulita was terrified and thought her mother would kill her. We got back to her front door and I could see her mother waiting at the window for her to show up, but she didn’t see us. Fula was too scared to go in.

  “Fula, I’ll take you back to my place tonight and tomorrow I’ll talk to your mother.” Two days passed and still I hadn’t had that talk with her mother, who was going crazy and looking for her all over the place, in hospitals, even the morgue to see if she had been killed.

  My sparring partner Chico found Fula’s mother crying on the street. “Señora, I will tell you. She is with Roberto Durán. Please don’t hit her.” She came to my apartment, screaming at Fula, “You are coming home!”

  “No, I’m staying with him!”

  After half an hour, her mother and father came back with the police, who took us both to the station house. They didn’t arrest me, but they told Fula she had to go back to her parents’, as she was still a minor. They locked her in the house—all because she’d wanted to go out and have some fun.

  Earlier in the week I’d bought her a turquoise bracelet, and now she asked her cousin Ana to give me her phone number so we could arrange a meeting for her to give it back to me. But this was a ruse to keep seeing me, and once she was allowed to leave the house again, we met secretly for three months.

  Eventually, her mother gave up trying to prevent us from seeing each other; she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. Finally, very reluctantly, her parents decided that if that was the life she wanted, she could go stay with me. Of course, within six months her parents and I were best friends. They loved me as much as they loved her, because they saw that I was a good man who treated their daughter like a queen. We wouldn’t marry until fourteen years after we met, but since those days we have been inseparable.

  There would be other important changes in my life around this time. Back in September 1970, Scotland’s Ken Buchanan had traveled to Puerto Rico to meet Ismael Laguna from Panama for the world lightweight championship. A lot of people, including me, thought Laguna would win, especially because of the climate. We didn’t think Buchanan would be able to deal with the heat. But he beat Laguna in a fifteen-round decision. He beat my idol, the idol of all of Panama! Laguna was no longer the fighter he had been. I got right on Eleta. “I want you to get me a fight with Ken Buchanan. I’ll beat him.”

  So in March 1972, I had my last fight before I got my opportunity to challenge the world title, against Francisco “Panchito” Muñoz in Panama City. Then it would be on to New York and Ken Buchanan for the WBA lightweight title at Madison Square Garden on June 26. And for this, Eleta recruited two legends of the sport to work my corner.

  Ray Arcel, especially, had trained some of the best—Henry Armstrong, Kid Gavilan, Benny Leonard, a bunch of others. Now Eleta, who knew him well, had convinced him to come out of retirement to work with me. Freddie Brown, too, had a great reputation, working as a cuts man or trainer with guys like Floyd Patterson and Rocky Marciano—he’d worked Marciano’s corner throughout his undefeated career. “I’m going to make you world champion,” said Eleta, “but you’ve got to go and train in New York. I’ve already talked to him.”

  “Señor Eleta, I’m not going to New York unless I go with Plomo,” I replied. “Nobody is going to take Plomo away from me. I was born with Plomo, I grew up with Plomo, and I’ll die with Plomo.”

  “Don’t worry, Cholo, no one’s going to take Plomo away from you. But these two gentlemen, who are legends in the sport, are going to join him.”

  Arcel was impressed when he met me. He thought I could be another Jack Dempsey; he could see I was street-smart—if you have that, you can do anything in the ring. He and Brown had four basics they wanted every fighter to follow:

  The left is as important as the right.

  Boxing is the art of hitting and not getting hurt.

  It’s not how hard you hit a man but where you hit him.

  The speed with which you cut up an opponent is directly related to how efficiently you cut off the ring.

  I thought I knew it all in boxing, but now these guys taught me a lot of tricks I went on to use in the ring. I was convinced it was only a matter of time before I became famous in boxing and made them even more famous. I knew now what I had to do and it wasn’t just about beating Buchanan, which I knew I could do with my eyes shut. What was more important was the way I beat him. I had to use the fight to show the world I was the greatest boxer around. And now these two legends would join me and help me prepare for the greatest challenge of my young career.

  The training was brutal with those guys, even though Eleta had made things easier by paying for my apartment. I still ran very early in the morning, around five o’clock, rested, had breakfast at ten, then trained in the afternoon from two onward. First I’d shadowbox to warm up, then work the speed bag for three or four rounds. After that, I hit the heavy bag—five minutes, three minutes, it varied. Then fifteen minutes of rope, then physical conditioning exercises for fifteen minutes. I’d spar three or four rounds. Sometimes Brown would have me go as many as seven rounds, at three minutes each.

  • • •

  WHEN WE MADE THE FIGHT, I had another request for Eleta: bring Chaflán. Chaflán was always asking me for a favor; this time it was, “Take me to New York.” He’d never thought he would leave Panama, but thanks to a man of influence like Carlos Eleta he was able to get a visa, because you don’t get a visa just like that.

  Chaflán came to stay in the same hotel with me in New York, and would come watch me training at Grossinger’s gym. But he got a bit out of control. He loved New York nightlife, and once when I went to pick him up at the hotel he wasn’t there. I found him in a bar, dancing to get tips from customers. I told him if the gringos found out, they would send him back to Panama, and that was the end of babysitting Chaflán. It was the only fight he came to. I kept my promise to bring him to one of my fights.

  I had other things to worry about—I had a fight to win. Buchanan saw me as just a kid from Panama, a nobody, and must have thought he was in for an easy time. He sat next to me at a press conference, having some bread and butter and a Coke, while behind us they were showing a clip of me beating Hiroshi Kobayashi in October 1971. A reporter asked him if he’d seen that fight and he said no, and added that I was too slow for him. I laughed. This fool doesn’t know the shitstorm that’s going to come down on him, I thought to myself.

  Buchanan disrespected me, but what really made me mad was that he said I was a lucky boy because I’d never had to fight my way up, step by step, the way he had. But he didn’t know Roberto Durán. I was raised in the streets, had to hustle for food every day. I’ve been fighting every single day of my life since I was a pelao. “Ever since I was a little kid I felt nobody could beat me,” I told reporters. “I have no respect for him. I’m undefeated—he should respect that.”

  I trained hard, worked on my speed. I didn’t train as if I was going to fight fifteen rounds, I trained as if I was going to fight twenty-five rounds. Instead of sparring three-minute rounds, I did four and a half minutes.

  The night of the fight, Arcel looked straight at me. “I suppose you won’t go back to Panama if you lose tonight.”

  “If I lose,” I told him, “I’ll kill myself.”

  I didn’t care that I was the two-to-one underdog. I knew all my hard training had given me twice the speed Buchanan had. I was very confident. At the weigh-in I sneered at him, trying to make eye contact, knowing he’d be afraid of me. On the night of the fight I felt
inspired the moment I left the dressing room: I could feel that I had it in me to take this guy down. Buchanan came out serenaded by bagpipes; I came out with a taste of my country’s sabor: a marimba band with flamenco dancers.

  I started strong and knocked him down in the first round with a sharp left to the head, even though some people thought it was a slip. But I give him credit for being strong the whole fight—another fighter would have been knocked out in four or five rounds, but he took a lot of punishment.

  After the third round, the Americans tried to put me at a disadvantage when the boxing commissioner asked Flaco Bala, my translator, to leave my corner—only three handlers were allowed in each corner. Arcel and I were still getting to know each other, and I didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Spanish. So now all Arcel could do was use simple words like “Jab, jab, jab” and “Punch, punch, punch.” But I knew what I had to do. I was born a boxer and I was in my element—this was going to be my day and I was going to let nothing get in the way.

  My right was beating his left lead consistently, and I would feint with the right and hook with the left while I kept my right hand in his face. His main weapon, the jab that had caused such problems for Laguna, was nothing. He was in so much trouble that in the middle of the fight he had to spit out his mouthguard so he could breathe.

  Finally, at the end of the thirteenth round, I had him against the ropes. He took a shot to the rib cage and went down. When he returned to his corner, he couldn’t continue fighting. He said I had hit him with my right hand in the nuts after the bell, but the referee, Johnny LoBianco, said it was a fair blow. He said the punch was “in the abdomen, not any lower.” It was more that I was smaller and he was taller.