I Am Duran

by Roberto Duran

  Those first months after the fight were some of the worst of my life. I still had the people who mattered to me—my wife, my kids, my family and friends—but the Durán name was no longer gold in Panama. It was as though everyone had been struck with amnesia and I had to fight through shit to remind them who I really was.

  SIX

  REDEMPTION ROAD

  IT’S NOT HOW MANY TIMES you get knocked down; it’s how many times you get back up.

  Everyone thought I was finished except me. Of course Don King was no longer kissing my ass, and he said the best he could do was get me a fight in August 1981 against Nino Gonzalez of Puerto Rico. My purse was $75,000 tax-free, a hundred times less than the last fight against Leonard: shit money, but King didn’t give me much choice. Gonzalez wasn’t what I wanted, but he was necessary to get to Wilfred Benítez and eventually get my revenge with Leonard. I didn’t care about Gonzalez, or any other guy. I only cared about Leonard. Indeed, all the American press wanted to talk about was Leonard. Eight months had gone by and still he didn’t want to give me the rematch I deserved. Maybe they should have asked him why.

  Arcel was gone—he said he couldn’t face seeing me go through all that again—so now it was Carlos “Panama” Lewis in my corner, along with Plomo, of course, who would have walked through fire for me. The fight was set for the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, and it would be televised in the afternoon, about four hours before the start of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in the stadium there. I had to get down to 154 pounds, the super-middleweight limit, and by July, I was about 165, so making the weight was not going to be a problem. I wasn’t going to get caught out again.

  I was determined to make it back to the top even though that summer had been very painful for me. Along with all the shit I was having to deal with, I was affected personally by an event with much wider significance. On July 31, 1981, a Panamanian air force plane with General Torrijos on board was flying in bad weather over western Panama, lost control, and went down; the general was killed. It was hard on me because we had so much history together, and I felt I owed much of what I’d achieved to his friendship. I visited his grave and made a pledge: “General, I came here to pay my respects. One thing I will promise: whenever I get my first chance to fight for the championship, I will bring it back to Panama. I will go in as a challenger and come out a champion.”

  I’d sparred three rounds a while back with Gonzalez—then the welterweight champion of New Jersey—in preparation for the fight against Leonard in Montreal. He’d told reporters he could see my eyes flaming when we sparred, but he said I was a beautiful guy outside the ring. Too bad we weren’t going to be outside the ring. I didn’t care for him, or any Puerto Rican, and I was going to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. At the press conference, he got mad, screaming at me that “a Puerto Rican might go down but he doesn’t quit.”

  I was going to make sure he went down, and I was true to my word that night as I punished him for ten rounds, with good shots to the head, and I had him up against the ropes several times. I could feel I was getting my form back. I won a unanimous decision. What good was beating him, knowing I still wasn’t a hundred percent? I hadn’t fought in nine months and hadn’t been able to put much pressure on him, but my reflexes were good, and so were my moves. The rest would come with training.

  Once again, after the fight, things weren’t straightforward, as the Cleveland Boxing Commission ruled that my corner had used an illegal substance during the final rounds. After a lot of arguing, they decided it hadn’t affected the outcome, so my victory stood, although they did suspend Panama Lewis, Plomo, and Eleta for the rest of the year.

  It didn’t matter to me: I’d won. I was happy with the way I’d fought, and convinced I would win another championship. I was fixing my sights on Leonard and a rematch. Then there was Wilfred Benítez: el huevón—the guy I’d flicked my finger at after the first Leonard fight. I could still remember the look he gave me. Now I was coming after him.

  That opportunity would come a few months later in Las Vegas: on January 30, 1982, I’d be lining up against Benítez for the World Boxing Council light-middleweight title. There was a decent amount of time to prepare—none of the rushed bullshit I’d been put through last time. Arcel was now back in my corner, working with Panama Lewis. He now accepted I’d been sick that night, he told me, and no longer doubted me. He’d gone through a rough time himself—for weeks after the fight, he’d hardly slept or eaten—but it had taken him a while to realize he wasn’t the only one suffering. When he finally felt better, Arcel had told Eleta to call him if I was ever in a big fight again.

  Although Arcel was back, Freddie Brown was out. There had been a falling-out with Eleta, which had nothing to do with me, so I didn’t ask any questions. But Eleta was back, so it was almost like the old days. It had taken him some time, almost a year, before he could trust me again—but a condition of him coming back, he told me, was that I had to get rid of all the manzanillos.

  Before his death, the general had suggested to Eleta that I should train on Coiba, a Pacific island about fifteen miles off the Panamanian coast. It was deserted except for a prison with about 350 inmates; there were sharks in the sea. Eleta had arranged the training site with some prominent boxing officials, and Don King had paid around $25,000 to the government of Panama to convert one of the buildings into a gymnasium. I’d assumed I was going to be back in Los Angeles, which would have suited me just fine. It was only when I was met by an army commander at the airport that I was told there was a change of plan and there was a plane waiting to take us to Coiba.

  “Are you crazy?” I said to Eleta.

  “No. It will be good for you. You’ll be well taken care of.”

  To fight as a light-middleweight, I had to lose weight, of course, and this would be the ninth time in my career I had to drop down in weight after being at 175 pounds or more. At least the island would help me get in shape: there was nothing to do there except sleep, run, spar, and fish. It was all part of Eleta and Arcel’s big plan. They wanted me away from Miami and the Catskills—as far as possible from any distractions.

  The trouble was, the guards there treated me like a prisoner, too. They wouldn’t let me make phone calls, and even though I slept in separate barracks from the inmates, I didn’t sleep well, which meant I didn’t train well. I’d brought a bunch of bats and balls with me, as I needed a diversion between training sessions, and I’d play softball with the prisoners, but that just made the guards jealous and they would treat them badly, so that didn’t work. Even worse, the guards would eat the food Eleta had arranged for me and my sparring partners—good food, prepared by a Chinese inmate! By the time I left, I was traumatized. All in all, it would have been better if I had gone to Los Angeles—at least that’s what I told Eleta.

  I got to Vegas a week before the fight and stayed in a private apartment instead of Caesars Palace. Eleta had ordered most of the manzanillos out, and Arcel said I was in the best shape, physically and mentally, that I’d been in since I’d knocked out de Jesús four years before. I thought so, too: I was up for beating Benítez. It was my first big fight in a higher weight class of 152½ pounds, and my first big fight since losing to Leonard. All I knew was, I needed to beat Benítez to have another shot at Leonard. I was treating it like my first fight. I had to win. It was as simple as that.

  Benítez was good, but not as good as me. He was 42–1–1, one of six fighters ever to hold championships in three divisions, and had won his last title from Britain’s Maurice Hope. Like me, he had a reputation for enjoying himself too much and then having to bust his ass to make weight. For this fight, he trained in Puerto Rico with his father, Gregorio, who was now saying I was a dirty fighter, a kickboxer. They were worried, they said, that I was going to use voodoo against him. Que mierda. What shit. But he was young—twenty-three, seven years younger than me. I was a nine-to-five underdog.

&nb
sp; At the press conference, Benítez’s father said they had trained to fight fifteen rounds “just in case you decide not to quit in the eighth.”

  I laughed. “After I beat Wilfred,” I told the reporters, “I am going to get Don King to sign my dad to fight his dad.” Benítez didn’t like that and he made a move for me. Nothing happened, but it showed he was afraid of me.

  “I can promise you this,” Arcel told the reporters, “if Durán ever thought he’d do again what he did against Leonard in New Orleans, he’d kill himself first.”

  On the night of the fight, we came into the ring with some of the guys in my entourage carrying a sign that read “El Cholo: The Legend Is Back.”

  The game plan was to fight Benítez inside and not let him win the fight on style points. But all night he made himself hard to hit and was quick to the punch. It was a bit frustrating. Whenever I got him against the ropes, he was able to slip me. Leonard was working as a ringside commentator. “I don’t see anything in Durán,” he said after the third round. I got in a good shot in the fourth—a right—and I got Benítez good again with another right to end the sixth, my best round so far. I felt I had a shot to wear him down—but the strength just wasn’t there. My legs started to feel weak, too.

  Then in the seventh Benítez landed a right-hand uppercut that drew blood above my left eye, and my corner did well to stop the bleeding before the bell went. I fought hard, like a champion. I never looked like quitting, and the “No más” critics had to acknowledge that. But at that higher weight, it was hard to move a man around like I usually could. In the thirteenth round, I got him again with a good right, but I just couldn’t sustain the pressure, and as the fight went on, the seven-year age difference started to show, and it was becoming clear to me that, however much smarter I was than my opponent, Benítez was quicker and stronger.

  After the bell at the end of the fight, he came over to try to finish with a hug, but I motioned him away with my glove. Then he started to taunt me. Comemierda. My people got in the ring and lifted me on their shoulders. We weren’t going to back down. The scores were close—145–141, 144–141, 143–142—but not in my favor.

  Afterward, Eleta said I should retire. Leonard had offered to fight me again, but only if I beat Benítez, and now he was saying I didn’t have it anymore. I was frustrated—pissed off. I think making the weight with just three weeks to spare had weakened me. I went back to Panama to think over my future. First things first: I had to forget about the fight and have a good time—that had always worked for me.

  But the best thing was to get back to boxing. Kirkland Laing was next, in a ten-round super-lightweight fight on September 4, 1982. He was the former welterweight champion of Britain and was a few years younger than me—but I didn’t care. I would put my extra ring experience to my advantage. This time, there was no prison training regime: I set up camp at Larry Holmes’s gym in Pennsylvania. To show people that I’d regained my self-discipline, I’d go to his nightclubs but not drink.

  The fight was a bad night for me, though. I was rusty, had trouble slipping punches, and couldn’t get my head moving properly. As I walked out into the ring for each round, I could feel myself standing too upright, which meant I couldn’t get my balance or leverage, and so my timing was off. I lost a split decision. It was still only my fourth defeat in seventy-eight fights, but boxing writers were calling it the upset of the year.

  Laing beat me because of my poor conditioning, though, not because he was better. I hadn’t trained properly—I’d been out at the clubs all night. Even though I hadn’t been drinking, it still had an effect.

  Now everything blew up. The aftermath was like the Leonard fight all over again. Don King stormed into my dressing room, cussing and screaming, yelling that I had too many manzanillos screwing around, making me lose focus, and he was finished with me. Flaco Bala left me. Once again, Eleta abandoned us to pay our own expenses! They all thought I was finished, that I’d never be able to climb the mountain again. The planned title fight against Tony Ayala in November was off the table. Only Plomo stayed loyal.

  Eleta told me he was giving up on me because I hadn’t trained properly, and he said good-bye by leaving me a million dollars, an apartment, and a house. I was worth more than that, though. But when I asked for more money, he said it had already been spent. I used to just ask Eleta and King for two or three thousand dollars at a time, but he reminded me that even though I’d promised to calm things down, I was still going through close to $10,000 a month on the manzanillos, hotels, food . . . It was difficult to give up that kind of stuff, especially when I was so used to it.

  It didn’t make any sense to me. “But I made so much off this fight,” I’d say. He didn’t have an answer. The money had gone. I was mad, and I wanted nothing more to do with him. It was a hard place to be. I’m a proud man, and I was suffering inside. I had to take care of my family, and boxing was the only way I knew how.

  • • •

  IN MIAMI, I went to see my good friend Minito Navarro, a famous Cuban sports broadcaster I’d known for years, who’d been the last mayor of San José before the revolution and, like so many other Cuban exiles, left after Fidel Castro took power. We’d first met in 1972, after I’d defeated Ken Buchanan, when Navarro was covering the fight for a Spanish-language radio station in Miami. Now here we were, eleven years later, with Eleta not only having deserted me again but also now insulting me in the Panama press, saying that I was so fat I should fight as a heavyweight. And Arcel was done with me, too.

  Navarro was supportive. He agreed Eleta had mismanaged and deceived me. “Tu no estás liquidado,” Navarro said. You’re not finished. “I’ll make you champion again—but you have to go back in the gym, have the right diet, and some discipline. You have to stop partying all night.”

  He was right. I loved the nightlife in Miami. I’d show up with all my manzanillos and take over the place, go onstage and sing with the Latin salsa band that played on weekends . . . Now Minito started coming along to keep things under control as much as possible.

  Enrique Encinosa, the boxing historian, described Navarro as a Svengali to me. I’d started to train independently, and sometimes Navarro would accompany me on my ten-mile run himself, on his bicycle, and then make me one of my favorite post-workout drinks: two raw eggs in a glass of sweet Spanish red wine.

  There would be some other positive influences in my life. I didn’t have a contract with anyone to be my manager, but one day a guy named Luis Spada came to me and said, “I’m willing to do anything. I’ll even carry your bucket.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “You can be my manager.”

  Spada was from Argentina and had promoted fights in Panama. For a while, he’d worked with Eleta—that’s when I first met him—but had gone his own way. He’d managed the junior flyweight champion Hilario Zapata from Panama, who six days after my loss to Leonard had even dedicated a world title defense to me.

  Spada had watched the Laing fight on TV and thought I was lousy, a disgrace. But he wanted to build me back up. He was not a magician, he told me: I was the only one who could change things. If I wasn’t up to it, he said, if I couldn’t be bothered to train properly, then he was done; he was too old for that kind of hassle. We agreed we’d make it work, but that we would need help.

  That’s how I found myself in the autumn of 1982 with Fula in Bob Arum’s office in New York City. I had gone there wanting him to promote some bigger fights for me and I sat there in tears, hoping he would give me a chance. But Arum and Teddy Brenner, his matchmaker, were skeptical. “What am I going to do with this fucking guy?” Arum said to Brenner. “He’s through.”

  But Brenner convinced him to give me another shot—I was a great fighter, a great attraction. “There’s nothing wrong with this guy, physically,” he said. “If you get him mentally right, he’d probably beat anybody around.”

  They were right. “No more rumba
,” I promised Arum, Navarro, and Spada, “no more girls.”

  My goal was to win the junior middleweight title by the following June—just eight months away. So they set up a fight for me on November 12, 1982, against another British fighter, Jimmy Batten, on the undercard of the super-fight between Alexis Argüello and Aaron Pryor at the Orange Bowl in Miami. It wasn’t much money, $25,000, but at least I was still fighting. But I had my pride, too, and I said no fucking way to the idea of fighting on the undercard—they weren’t going to humiliate me like that. So they agreed to promote me as the walkout fighter after the Pryor–Argüello fight.

  At 157 pounds, I weighed the heaviest of my career. I also had a back problem a couple of days before the fight and had to go to the hospital for X-rays. Fortunately, I was okay. Although I was not at my best, I still won in a ten-round decision. Arum wasn’t happy with the result and told me he didn’t think I had anything left. “What am I going to do with him, Teddy?” he kept asking Brenner.

  I was training in Los Angeles when Arum came to me saying he had a fight lined up with Pipino Cuevas, the Mexican welterweight. Cuevas had been WBA champion for four years and had hurt people badly, sometimes sending them to the hospital. Then in August 1980 he’d fought Thomas Hearns, and that was another story. Hearns had destroyed him in two rounds. Cuevas had won two of his next three fights since then but hadn’t been impressive, and his loss to Roger Stafford had been named “Upset of the Year” by The Ring magazine.

  But this was a different situation. The promoters knew a fight between Durán and Cuevas in Los Angeles would be a big deal because of the growing Hispanic fan base on the West Coast, not to mention all the Mexicans who’d support Cuevas.

  “What weight?” I asked Arum. He told me 152–154.