Arcel tried to keep my spirits up, telling the press I reminded him of Rocky Marciano. “He rips you and tears at you. He might miss a punch, but eventually he’ll get you. I worked with Joe Louis fourteen times and before each one of his fights you could look across the ring and see his opponent droop and go to pieces. Believe me, Leonard is going to go in there with some fear in his heart Tuesday night. He’s a good fighter, but he knows Durán has him. You wait and see what happens.”
There was still bad blood between us, even though this time Leonard was saying some good things about me. The day of the fight, in an interview with Larry Holmes, he said that the first time around he thought I was all hype but now he knew I was for real. Still, he told Holmes: “I don’t like him. He definitely doesn’t like me. And the reason I don’t like him is because he disrespects himself and the public, and I feel that being a champion, you should display class, and he doesn’t show class in no shape or form.”
Leonard was right about one thing: the dislike was mutual. He was the kind of guy who, if he moved into my neighborhood, would prompt me to move. But deep down, I was worried. I wasn’t feeling well. I spent almost every day in the sauna. I went two days without eating. When I stepped on the scale, I weighed 146—I’d lost almost fifty pounds! But it came at a cost: I was too weak—I could feel nothing in my legs. I was nowhere near the fighter I’d been just months earlier.
In the days leading up to the fight, we went through some bullshit with Leonard’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, who said my beard was too thick and he wanted it trimmed. Leonard showed up at a workout wearing a long fake beard and a knitted cap, pretending to be me. After his workout, he picked up the microphone and said: “Me no like Roberto Durán. I keel him. Be there.” Que comemierda. What a dumb-ass.
And then, after the weigh-in at noon the day of the fight, I had two thick sirloin steaks and orange juice at the restaurant in the Hyatt Regency, which is something I’d done a couple of times before to get my energy up. I had a cup of very hot coffee and then a cup of very cold water. Chuleta! Damn! That’s when the stomachache hit me.
“Gorda, my stomach hurts,” I told Fula around six. “I don’t feel so good.” She gave me some pills to make my stomach feel better. But as they were taping my hands, I was still grimacing, and Fula said to herself, I don’t like the look of this.
Eleta had seen Leonard, along with his trainers, moving around the ring and loosening the ropes, which was an old trick used to keep an opponent in his place. Angelo Dundee had done the same thing for the Rumble in the Jungle, allowing Muhammad Ali to “rope-a-dope” by leaning back against the ropes to absorb the weight of the punches thrown by George Foreman. “Be careful you don’t get up against the ropes,” said Eleta. They were doing everything they could to set me up to lose.
Finally, I finished taping up and we headed for the ring. I had a big entourage with me, as many as thirty-six people, including a lot of manzanillos, some of whom I barely recognized, all wearing tracksuits and waving little Panamanian flags. Leonard had fewer people, but he did have Ray Charles with him to sing “America the Beautiful” before the fight. Leonard was a big fan because he’d been named after the singer, and he had specifically asked for him, whatever the cost. After singing for some 20,000 people, Ray Charles whispered in his ear, “Kick his ass!”
Years later, Leonard said he had looked me in the eye as Charles was singing, and knew it was going to be a good night. He thought he’d psyched me out already, but I wasn’t intimidated by him or the blind guy singing the American’s song. I just didn’t feel too good, my stomach trouble had been getting worse. Whatever he saw in my eyes had nothing to do with him.
But my record on entering the ring that night was 72–1, with fifty-six KOs. Leonard had those twenty-seven victories, sure, but that one defeat was because of me. I was the better man, the better fighter—that’s what history already said. I didn’t need Eleta, or anyone, to remind me of it, and now I began to feel better about things and that I could still win.
When the bell rang, Leonard was bouncing, dancing around, from the start. This was a different Leonard from the first fight—boxing this time, not flat-footed as he’d been before. He’d done his homework. At the end of the round, he landed a right; he didn’t hurt me, I just smiled. But already I was feeling weaker: there was no way I was going to last fifteen rounds or have the strength to knock him down. I was going to have to find another way out of the fight.
Leonard continued dancing for a couple of rounds, but in the third I got him in the corner and pounded him with some good shots. He smiled, but I knew I’d hurt him. Maybe I could end it early despite my problems? I can do this, I told myself. In the fourth, I continued trying to fight him inside, but he kept holding. Still, I kept on pounding, trying to go to the body. Against the flow of the fight, I knocked Leonard down in the fifth, but they counted it as a slip. I got him again good at the end of the round when he was against the ropes. It was my best round by far, but I’d spent too much energy. During the sixth, Leonard went back to dancing, and in the seventh round he began acting like a clown, moving his head back and forth, taunting me and doing the Ali Shuffle. I motioned to him to come fight me, but he kept dancing. That’s not boxing.
Leonard would later say that none of that was planned—he was doing all those things on the spur of the moment—but when he saw I was getting frustrated, he kept going. Of course I was frustrated, because I wanted to box, not dance the salsa with this payaso, this clown.
In the eighth, we had an exchange against the ropes, but by then I had had enough. It was not going to be my night. My arms were weak, my body was weak. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe properly. I backed off and waved with my right hand. Leonard hit me a few times, but I kept motioning to the referee that I didn’t want to fight.
“What’s happening?” said Les Keiter, a TV announcer. “Durán says no. I think he’s quitting. What is he saying, Larry?” he asked Larry Holmes, who was one of the commentators along with Don King.
“He quit!” screamed Keiter. “I think Durán quit! . . . He said, ‘No more.’ And then he did it again.”
“I don’t understand it,” Holmes kept saying.
And Howard Cosell, the fight commentator for ABC, was yelling: “What? Roberto has quit! Roberto Durán has quit! There can be no other explanation! Pandemonium in the ring, and Roberto Durán has quit!”
I never said, “No más.” This is the truth. I just turned my back and motioned to the referee that I didn’t want to continue. Howard Cosell made that crap up because he didn’t like me. When the referee asked me what I was doing, all I said was, “No sigo,” I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t keep fighting. It wasn’t my night. I felt like crap . . . but I never said, “No más.”
Officially, it was a TKO after two minutes and forty-four seconds into the eighth round. Leonard was ahead on all the judges’ scorecards, but not by much—by two points on one scorecard and one point on the other two, but he beat me only because of the circumstances. I knew I was a thousand times the better man, that if I’d trained properly, if I hadn’t had those two steaks, I would have had him all over again. I didn’t have to respect him.
I was the first champion to voluntarily surrender a title since Sonny Liston quit in 1964 against Cassius Clay, and there was controversy that night, too. Liston had been the strong favorite, ten to one, but he went back to his stool after the sixth, spat out his mouthguard, and quit. He’d torn a muscle in his left shoulder and couldn’t fight anymore. A doctor confirmed it, but even today people still think that the fight was fixed.
There’d be a lot of commotion that night in New Orleans, too, about whether my fight was fixed. But first, there was a commotion in the ring. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. At ringside, the press people were still trying to figure it out—they could not believe I’d quit. Leonard’s brother got in the ring and threatened to fight me, and then the p
olice came into the ring, which didn’t really help. In the middle of all this, Leonard came over and hugged me, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was thinking, I won one, he’s won one, so now he has to give me a rematch. So I turned my back on him. I was pissed off, frustrated, out of shape—I knew it was never going to be my night. The whole evening descended into chaos.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning.
At the press conference later, things started to go bad rather quickly. I said I’d had cramps, that I hadn’t been a hundred percent physically or mentally. Leonard may have beaten a legend, I went on, but he hadn’t done it by fighting but by trying to shame me—sticking his tongue out and acting like a girl, like a payaso—and the longer it had gone on, the more the fans had been laughing. So I’d said, Fuck it, I’m done. I’m done. Hell, my mind was pretty mixed up about the future, too. I told reporters I was retiring. “I’ve been fighting for a long time. I’m tired of the sport. I don’t want to fight anymore.” It was all frustration over getting asked questions I didn’t want to answer right then.
I’m a proud man, but also an impulsive one. Sometimes I make a bad decision, and in due course, I’m brought up short and think, Oh shit. This was one of those moments—the biggest “Oh shit” moment of my life—but it was too late. I’d let my emotions get the better of me. I didn’t know the world would react the way it did, and I didn’t know I would get treated like shit for so long. I didn’t know it would haunt me for the rest of my life. But it happened. I have no regrets.
But all this was still to come, and having said fuck it, in my suite in the Hyatt Regency, I partied with my family and the manzanillos just like I always had. At the time, I wasn’t too bothered: it had been a bad night for me—so what? It was only the second time in my career this had happened, and the first since de Jesús had beaten me in 1972, and I’d come back to beat his ass twice. This was not going to be any different. I reasoned that we were 1–1 with a rematch to come, and then I’d beat his ass because I would train properly, and what’s more, I wasn’t going to let Eleta dictate the terms of the fight. All I saw was a huge payday and a lot of publicity for a third fight that would show once and for all who was the better man in the ring. I was not going to let that clown humiliate me again.
I wasn’t going to retire, of course—I knew that as soon as I’d said it. What the fuck was I going to do, especially on the kind of money I’d earn as a pelao who dropped out of school in the third grade? I wasn’t going back to El Chorrillo to sell newspapers or dance in the streets like Chaflán. I am Durán. I was going to get back in the ring and kick someone’s ass. At least that’s what I thought.
My personal physician, Orlando Núñez, had already run tests on me and confirmed my stomach cramps. But all everyone could talk about was “No más.” It started then and it went on for years. Even now, thirty-six years later, people still bring up that “No más” shit. Fuck “No más.” I’m sick of hearing it, as if I’d had only one fight in my career. What about all the fights I won? What about all the people I knocked on their asses? That’s my legacy, just as much as what happened that night. People were quick to forget about that, especially the guys who hung around when times were good. When the shit hit, they soon ran.
I made an impulsive decision, and it went down as infamy in boxing history, with very bad consequences for me. But I couldn’t take it back, and I’m not apologizing. It happened, and now I wanted to move on. But obviously, not everyone was ready to.
Me, my family, we were treated like shit. Mierda. The state boxing commission fined me $7,500 and threatened to take away my purse of $1.5 million. But they couldn’t; it had already been deposited in Panama. Besides, I’d been screwed over once already with the first fight when Leonard made a shitload more money than I did: after all the pay-per-view money came in, he wound up with somewhere between $10 million and $13 million. All I received for beating him was a flat $1.5 million. And now the American writers had the nerve to say that I took the money and ran. “Leonard could not have shamed Durán more thoroughly if he had reached over and pulled down his trunks,” wrote Ray Didinger. Sports Illustrated wrote that it was “The Big Bellyache.” Johnny Carson joked that he’d considered having me on his show to sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” but decided against it because, he said, “I’m afraid he’ll quit by the eighth day.”
The worst part was that it wasn’t only the Americans who were treating me like shit. When I went to have breakfast the next morning at the hotel coffee shop, everyone around me made themselves scarce, even the guys I trusted most. Ray Arcel was devastated over what I’d done—after the press conference, he’d gone back to his hotel room and cried. He said I needed a psychologist, not a doctor—he’d handled thousands of fighters, he told me, and not one of them had quit. He didn’t say so to my face, but I could tell he, too, had lost faith in me.
Eleta didn’t even leave me the money for the flight home. He abandoned us like dogs—my pregnant wife as well. One day I was the greatest fighter on the planet; the next, I was sitting in the back of a friend’s van with Pototo and his wife, with Fula, Plomo, and “Ratón” (Rat), one of my sparring partners, taking turns at the wheel, driving more than twelve hours from New Orleans to Miami Beach, where my friend paid for me to stay at the DiLido Hotel. I decided the only thing to do was lie low in Miami—at least I felt at home there. Or that’s what I thought. Then the shit really started.
Within days, the World Boxing Hall of Fame had revoked my honorary membership. “The World Boxing Hall of Fame is an organization dedicated to the objective of publicly recognizing and honoring the greatest professional boxers in history and highlighting their careers by induction into a permanent place of distinction,” its president said. “Roberto Durán’s action tarnished the good name of boxing and is a disgrace to all the former champions already inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
But my biggest problem wasn’t some organization I barely knew. It was my own country. A country that had been solidly behind me now suddenly turned on me. They said I had sold out, that I was a coward, that I had no honor, that I should never be allowed to fight again. They threw rocks at our house and called me a bastard. My mother’s home was vandalized with graffiti that read “Durán, Traitor.” There was still worse to come. Gallina—chicken. Maricón—faggot. Cobarde—coward. I’d dealt with some pretty rough stuff in my life, but this really tested my mental strength.
Chuleta, things were crazy. I had no idea this kind of shit was going to happen to me. Where was the respect? I’d ask anyone who’d listen. Where were all those people who loved me when I was winning all those fights? Chupasangre, we call such people in Panama, bloodsuckers. But I kept quiet because I knew that deep down I was the same man I’d always been. Al mal tiempo buena cara. In bad times, keep your chin up.
When things had calmed down, I gave an interview to a Panamanian radio station of Eleta’s, stressing that I was not going to retire but instead would seek my revenge against Leonard. I couldn’t go home yet—not with everything I was hearing—so I stayed on in Miami and went back to the gym to prove to people that the real Roberto Durán was still here. We spent eight months there, and I was very grateful to the Cubans in Miami for their loyal support.
It wasn’t easy on my family. Chavo had kids teasing him at school. He wasn’t looking for a fight, but if they wanted one, he wasn’t going to hide. You can call me what you like, I can take it. But don’t fuck with my family. What do they have to do with it? If people wanted a fight, they should have come and found me.
Of course, it wasn’t easy for me, either. When I finally returned to Panama, I didn’t go out at all—not like the old days. I stayed indoors so I didn’t have to hear all the crap from people who’d partied in my house when I was winning—the same people who’d start crying if their wives punched them in the face. Pendejos. Assholes.
Meanwhile, I had serious money troubles. Pa
rt of the reason for going back to Panama was to try to cash in on my fights, but there was nothing in the bank. “What money?” said Eleta. “You’ve spent all your money.”
“What money?” I flashed back. “The most I’ve asked from you has been three or four hundred dollars here and there. What about all the millions I’ve made?”
“You’ve been going through ten thousand dollars every month.”
I didn’t say anything else. I was just really mad. I never bothered to keep track of my money. I made it and gave most of it to my wife to look after. I never saw the contracts or knew what was going on. I didn’t know how much I was fighting for; like I said, all I did was sign. My job was to fight, and I trusted Eleta, loved him like a father. And then he turned on me, stabbed me in the back like a traitor, blamed everything on the partying and the manzanillos. He said that Arcel was magnificent and Freddie Brown had done all he could. Brown told me that I was not an easy man to handle and he wouldn’t train me again unless I changed my lifestyle completely. I thought things were bad when I was hiding out in Miami, but the reality turned out to be much worse!
But what was I supposed to do? The one time I needed them, they forced me into the ring too soon and then blamed me for quitting. What was I supposed to do after beating Leonard in the first fight? Stay at home, go to church every day, not screw around and not drink? That’s not who I am.
Thirty-six years later, that fight still bothers me. I still don’t want to see that shit: you can watch something a hundred times and you still live it like it’s the first time. Recently, Juan Carlos Tapia, a Panamanian journalist, put together a history of my fights on DVD and sent my son Robin the whole set. Robin put a disc in the player and the “No más” fight began. “Why is that on?” I started yelling. “Get that shit off my TV!”
I Am Duran Page 11
