Roberto was an unusual child even among the mixed bag that Plomo coached. “After training, Duran’s day was only beginning,” said Plomo. “Duran would go to the streets after training and then to a local park called Santa Ana, where he shined shoes to gain seven cents to bring home and give to his mom. I had several boys that also fought very well, even one who was really good, but he would always cry when hit. When I saw Duran, I realized he resisted being hit and so I decided to leave all the others and devote my time just to him. Duran really had the quality needed.”
That defiant attitude would pay dividends for both men. Plomo took Duran and began to shape him. He began to focus his defiance and funnel his boundless energy.
HAVING STARTED out in the sport in 1956 with his first pupil, Zapatito Molina, Plomo was to witness the original Panamanian boxing boom. The sport first took root there around 1910 when the Canal was finished. Black laborers from Barbados, Jamaica and other islands stayed on and fought each other and visiting U.S. seamen for small purses and side bets in bars and theaters. Though the country’s first world champion, a gangling, flamboyantly homosexual bantamweight called Al Brown, reigned back in the Twenties, he fought most of his contests in the United Sates and Europe, and the sport did not take off in Panama until after the Second World War, in particular when the U.S. increased its military presence in the contentious Canal Zone. In the mid-Fifties, Plomo started working with young prospects, often around the ages of nine or ten.
“There were many places in Maranon, not boxing gyms but places where people were starting to box,” Plomo recalled. “In the yards of houses, people would set up rings and hold boxing matches. They would set down wooden planks where the canvas would be, and then wrap around the ropes. Then people would come and would stage boxing matches. It wasn’t a very big ring, but it was big enough to hold matches. Back in Panama during those times there were many quality boxers. They started fighting in the streets and didn’t have to go get a gun or anything. They would fight with their hands and whoever won the fight, that’s where the fight ended, nothing more. They wouldn’t hold any grudges.”
The Maranon Gym, later to be renamed Pascual Cielo Gonzalez, was built in the gallery of an old train station. At the time, athletes had no place to train, so when the station closed, the gallery space was converted and the local mayor agreed to let it be used for boxing. A vast, metal-roofed, concrete building, painted light blue, the gym had a basketball court marked inside and a ring in the centre, barely illuminated by shafts of light from window holes. A variety of spectators invariably gathered there, from local workers in typical white, open-necked shirts to a myriad of children staving off boredom by watching prospects hit the speed bag.
Neco de La Guardia in Chorrillo had previously been the best gym around, while nearly two hours from the capital, in the notorious slums of Colon, were two other boxing gyms: Teofilo Al Brown, named after the country’s first champion, and a pokey hole called the Box of Matches, so named because young boxers crowded in there so tightly that they had to rub shoulders to punch the bags. Greats like Luis Ibarra, Ismael Laguna and Eusebio Pedroza would train there. “It was such a small gym and so many trainers worked with fighters there,” said Plomo. “It was always full and no matter how many people were there, everybody trained together.”
By the age of twelve, Duran was a painter and handyman for Don Jose Manuel Gomez, a hotelier he affectionately called “Viejo.” His mother already worked at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was popular with American soldiers and their wives, washing and ironing and cleaning rooms, and she introduced her sons to Gomez, a kindly man who taught Duran about dedication to work and basic moral values. Duran would often refer to him as a father figure. It wasn’t unusual for the family to sleep in a room at the hotel.
“Jose Manuel Gomez was in love with my mother, but she never paid any attention to him,” said Duran. “He gave my older brother Toti a job in the hotel … it had like sixty or seventy rooms. Later on he gave me a job there too. I would make three dollars a week. We used to sleep in the maintenance room. He taught me to paint, to polish furniture and bed springs. We used to put a covering on the roof to protect us from the rain. We painted the hotel inside out. We used to use brooms to reach the parts that we couldn’t reach. I used to go to school sometimes in the mornings or afternoons and sometimes in the night. This man taught me to work and never to steal, that it was better to ask than steal. My brother and I never stole, never smoked and never tried drugs.”
Despite the friendliness of the Americans at the Roosevelt, trouble was in the air. On January 9, 1964, in what became known as the Day of the Martyrs, anti-U.S. rioting broke out in the Canal Zone. It began when a U.S. flag was torn down during conflict between Panamanian students and Zonians over the right of the Panamanian flag to be flown alongside it. The U.S. Army intervened after Canal Zone police were overwhelmed, and after three days of fighting, about twenty-two Panamanians and four U.S. citizens were dead.
“Clara always lived in extreme poverty,” said her sister Mireya. “When it was January the Ninth, the students entered the area of the Canal. My sister had moved to a place called Caledonia. She had a room there, next to an ice factory. I had gone there for a visit. There was a terrible gunfire there and we all had to get inside and under the bed – my brother Joaquin, Toti, Roberto, Marina and I. That is where my sister was with her poverty.”
Schooling came third behind hustling for a living and boxing. Although it has been documented that Duran stayed in school until he was fourteen years old, some family members don’t recall him getting past the third grade. He had no inclination to study and was expelled from several schools. “He got up to fourth grade,” insisted Clara. “Something was happening with the teacher. She did not like Roberto, and Roberto, who was a quiet child, did not like her bothering him. Roberto used to say: ‘Mama, I will later take a private teacher at home.’”
According to Toti, however, Roberto tried to hit one male teacher, then tried to kiss a female replacement. Duran himself recalled his brief education in Sports Illustrated. “I remember in school one day, a kid came over to hit me and I moved. We exchanged positions, so his back was toward the steps. I hit him and he fell backward down the steps. And they threw me out.”
Duran’s natural grammar was the argot of the streets. But the streets were a dangerous place. Though he steered clear of the late-night haunts he would frequent later in his career, and stayed with his tight circle of friends, he would occasionally go to bars or the annual Mejorana Festival in Guarare. He found his share of trouble, often because he would look out for his friends, and his loyalty never wavered.
The fire inside him ignited one evening at La Pollera bar. Aged just fifteen, he had stayed too late into the hours when corruption and addiction prevailed. As was customary in Panama, the fiesta would end only when the final customer left. Drinkers of Panama had plenty of choice, from the national beers of Atlas, Soberana and Balboa, to the local liquor Seco-Herrerano, mixed with coke or orange juice. Someone would be delegated to fetch the bottle of liquor and the ubiquitous plastic container of ice, and the runs back to the bar never seemed to stop. Within minutes at dances or rodeos, the ice would melt into a fusion of water and liquor, sending someone back to fetch another flimsy bucket. Parties in the country often started late and ended the next morning, when everyone was sated. Wallflowers were not permitted. Everyone danced merengue, salsa, or cumbia, no matter what size or shape; everyone knew how to move.
This particular night, slow in dying down, reeked of violence and bloodshot eyes. By its end, five men would be in a Panama City jail cell connected to the St Tomas Hospital, recovering from an assortment of scrapes, broken noses and bruises. It was obvious they had been in a fight and had been caught severely unprepared. But what, asked the police, had happened?
The young Duran was charming, athletic and strikingly handsome, with a clean-cut and straight black hair. He had first frequented La Pollera with his mother,
and had learned to dance there. Early this evening, he met a pretty girl, and was taking her home when he ran into a truculent group of men. It must have seemed easy to them: Beat up the kid, get the girl and keep partying. “Five guys, about six or seven years older than me, start to follow us,” recalled Duran. “They come around me. They said they were going to take my girl and I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I told them that they weren’t going to take anyone. ‘She’s going home,’ I said. One of them comes toward me and, boom, I hit him and he’s knocked out. Now, there were four of them.
“It’s rainy and I tell her to go to the side, hit another one, and now there are two knocked out and three left. Three jumped me, and I hit one of them and I break my pinky finger and I can’t close it. Two left, and I tell them, ‘Now it’s fair.’ Both come on me and I grab them and I knock one out. I’ve already knocked out four and I say to the guy, ‘It’s only me and you left.’”
Those are six words that no one in their right mind would want to hear from the mouth of Roberto Duran. He would utter such threats in the ring countless times, but there are rules between the ropes. There were none that evening. The lone survivor considered the fact that, at fifteen, the kid was merely five-feet-five inches tall and barely over 100 pounds. And if he couldn’t knock him out, he could cut him up.
“The guy reaches behind him and he has a knife,” said Duran. “The guy cuts me from behind and I was like, damn, he cut me. I turn and knock him out. There were five guys knocked out and the police come and I take off running because I’m a minor at that time. And I heard someone shouting, ‘Run away Duran, if not they will put you in jail.’ I couldn’t escape from them because the guy ran better than I did.”
Duran was thrown into a cell with the girl and was detained for several hours while the police tried to piece together what had happened. Five men knocked cold, a fifteen-year-old with a broken finger and a slight bruise, a hysterical girl and no independent witnesses.
“It’s about seven or eight in the morning and they open the door to tell me that the lieutenant wants to see me,” said Duran. “Five guys were there one after another and the police told me to stand there. I had my hand ready to hit them again. All the five guys are all swollen. The cops ask the men if they know me and each one says, ‘No. I do not know what happened. I have no idea. I do not even know who brought us here.’
“Then the cop asks if they know what happened last night and they shake their heads no. Then he asks if they were involved in a fight and they say no. Then the cop asks if they are accusing anybody of anything and they say, ‘Who are we going to accuse?’”
Still in disbelief, the police let the five men leave and kept Duran and his girl in the cell, mainly to avoid reprisals from the men. “When I get out, I tell the girl to go before the sergeant regrets it and throws us back in jail. I knocked five guys out with my bare hand, and I’ve even been shot at. My mother sent me to my aunt’s house. While we were talking, a big man came in, and she said he was her husband. ‘Your husband?’ I asked. ‘That was the man who sent me to prison.’ ‘No, that’s not true,’ he said. ‘I had to take him there as if he was going to jail because there was a fight, and I tried to protect him.’ Can you imagine my surprise? It was the man who had married my aunt. After a long time, I celebrated a party for him, for this son of a bitch, at my own house.”
Duran’s reputation in the streets often landed him with challenges. Yet these fights also solidified the unspoken bond that if you were a friend of Roberto Duran’s, he would stand up for you. He was fiercely loyal. “When I was starting my boxing career, there was in Chorrillo the first bar with air-conditioning,” he said. “At that time there were only canteens. It was the first time that at a bar in Panama, in the upper section of Chorrillo, they put up a music show. I used to hang out a lot then with the Barraza brothers. I was there with them when a girlfriend of mine arrived. I came in and took off my jacket, placing it on the chair. Then I felt like dancing, so I went to dance. Suddenly I saw a huge guy standing next to my table, and peeing on my jacket. When I walked up to him and asked him what he was doing, he said that if I wanted to fight with him, he was ready to fight with me. He then told me to go outside to fight.
“We both went out, my friends close to me, and his friends surrounding him. The guy tried to get in his car after throwing a punch at me, but after avoiding it, I got him out of the car. Then his friends came to fight, and mine got in their way, and the fight started. All of a sudden I saw that five of his friends were jumping on me. I started hitting them one by one, and knocking them down. I finally was left with only one, but then my friends came and threatened the remaining ones. My friends enjoyed watching me because I was a boxer in the street and also in the ring. So I started punching this huge guy all over his body and knocked him down too. When he stood up in the end, he said he did not want to go on. One of the Barraza brothers told him that he had started the whole thing but he answered that he did not want this to continue; he wanted peace now. We got back to the bar and went on drinking. Then we went to have dinner.”
DURAN STARTED to box for the Club Cincuentenario amateur squad, which would face other area boxing squads. The Panamanian Amateur Program was composed of boxers representing various clubs around Panama. Club Cincuetenario had nine, Panama had four, and Club Maranon had just one club. Within Panamanian amateur boxing were fine young boxers such as the Maynard brothers, Enrique Pinder, Cristobal Cordoba, Antonio Vargas, Enrique Warren and many others. Along with many of them, Duran would leave Neco de la Guardia and begin training at the Maranon Gym. In February 1965, fighting in the ninety-pound weight class for the Cincuentenario Club, he scored a unanimous decision victory over Enrique Martinez. All three judges felt Duran did enough to win his first recorded bout.
While Duran’s bout with Martinez has been recorded as his amateur debut, Duran recalled another opponent. “The first fight in the amateurs in the Maranon Gym, I beat this guy called Antonio ‘La Cabeza’ Vargas and I beat him bad. I knocked him down, and they still gave him the fight,” said Duran. “The guy never wanted to give me a rematch.” In a match held in March 1965 that many Panamanian writers had recorded after the Martinez victory, two of the three judges scored the fight for Vargas. By “coincidence,” Vargas was managed by program coordinator Demetrio “Baba” Vasquez.
In the streets Duran was judged by his peers, but now he had to impress boxing judges, who favoured style over naked aggression. He showed exceptional promise in his weight class, which didn’t have many skilled boxers. He relied on technique rather than his power, which had yet to grow, and his mind rather than instinct. After eight months boxing for Club Cincuentenario, he was 12-1 (Twelve wins and one loss: boxers' records are denoted numerically by win-loss-draw, so 30-2-1 would mean thirty wins, two losses and one draw) by the end of the year, and had moved up to the 106-pound division. After the loss to Vargas, Duran, now under the watchful eye of Plomo, wouldn’t lose another bout that season. Fans began to take notice of this up and coming fighter, who they called “Robe,” and even future world champ Enrique Pinder refused to fight this restless bull. Realizing his potential, several important figures in the Panamanian sports industry began to invest time in the young fighter’s career: engineer Erasto Espino, Duran’s first adviser, Juvenal L. Chemenuncie, and Mocho Sam, a roadwork and massage specialist.
On October 4, 1966, Duran met Jorge Maynard in a tournament at the Pascual Cielo Gonzalez Gymnasium. Two fighters from each division were invited and Duran and Maynard fought at light-flyweight, or 106 pounds. Maynard, who was also managed by Baba Vasquez, would become Duran’s amateur nemesis. In the first bout he won the unanimous decision, handing Duran his first loss that season. Twenty-five days later, the pair faced off again for the Golden Gloves crown and again Duran lost. “Duran was only beginning then,” said Plomo. “He was 100 [pounds] going to 106, so he was not ready yet. It was a rather good fight despite being very difficult. Duran succeeded in hitting him h
ard at times. It was a very close fight but since Maynard was more experienced, the judges decided for Maynard.” According to a boxing writer in La Aficion, the rematch in Neco de La Guardia was a replica of the first meeting, with Maynard using his technical skills to offset the burro tirando golpes, or bull-throwing punches, of his foe. Maynard was now the light-flyweight champ.
“Two times he beat me in a row, then I found out that the referee in the ring was Maynard’s uncle,” said Duran. “That was pretty strange. That’s why he beat me by decision. Each of the times I fought him I gave him my best punches. Then, after those losses, I did thirteen fights and won them all.”
He also still had his run-ins in the street. “Chicha Fuerte Ruiz was a much experienced boxer, he was already a national champion,” said Plomo. “There was a quarrel between Ruiz’s family and Duran’s, and Duran offered Ruiz boxing gloves in the middle of the street. I was only told this story. I was not present. Since Ruiz was a professional by then but Duran was not, it could already be imagined that Duran was going to make it as a professional too.
The brawl, late at night, was chaotic. “Chicha Fuerte’s wife had a fight with my mother and insulted her,” said Toti. “After my mother insulted her back, Chicha Fuerte’s wife went to call her husband. He had just finished a fight in Mexico. That night I was going to fight Chicha Fuerte, but Roberto asked me to let him fight with him. They started fighting and Chicha Fuerte’s woman hit Roberto. But there were some bandits who knocked Duran down and Chicha Fuerte was supposed to step on Duran and start hitting him. But I kicked his stomach strongly and succeeded in making him fall. Then Duran got on hitting him, but it was at night and you could see very little. They were many and we did not know who had knives. But Roberto knocked Chicha Fuerte down. That was a famous fight story. When the police came, they found no one. We had all run away by then.”
Hands of Stone Page 4
