Duran countered, “All Marcel did was hug me the whole fight and smell the cologne I was wearing. Marcel never made weight, lost by forfeit and I even gave him pounds. He never wanted to get in the ring with me. It was just about the time that my body started to become quick. After the fight, I never saw him again. To this day I ask him to his face why he didn’t fight me again.”
Although Marcel claims to remember boxing official Juan Carlos Tapia interrogating Herrera about the stoppage, Tapia denies it. “I was a judge in that fight,” said Tapia. “Marcel got really scared. He received a punch in the ninth round in the throat and he didn’t want to fight anymore. In the tenth round, he ran around until the fight was over. The referee told him that he had to fight, and when Marcel did not fight, they stopped the fight and gave it to Duran by TKO. All three judges had Duran winning. If the fight would have lasted ten rounds, Duran would have won a unanimous decision.”
While Marcel claimed he wanted a rematch at 128, Duran’s natural growth and excessive eating habits forced him to move to the 135-pound limit. “I asked Duran for the rematch,” said Marcel. “And he said he would go his way and for me to go my way. And I went on to be a world champ at this weight.” Duran countered: “In a three minute round, for two and a half of those minutes Marcel would dance around and run from me. In the last minute, he would try to stand up to me and impress the judges and the fans, but when we went toe-to-toe, I broke him apart. By the fifth round, I was way ahead of him. [Years later, at an honorary dinner] he came over to me, hit me in the ribs and told me that I was the only man to really beat him. And I said, ‘If you really wanted the rematch, then why didn’t you come up to the 135-pound limit? You were afraid to fight me at 135 because you were afraid I’d beat your ass again.’”
In August 1972, Ernesto Marcel won the WBA featherweight title to become one of four Panamanian world champions. He would retire from the sport, still champion, two years later.
FOR ALL THAT the Duran-Marcel fight captured the imagination, there was still only one true boxing hero in Panama. In November 1965, Ismael Laguna had lost his lightweight crown in a rematch with Carlos Ortiz, but in March 1970, he had regained it from Mexican bomber Mando Ramos, traveling to Los Angeles – where Ramos was hugely popular – to do so. “The whole stadium was against me,” Laguna recalled. “I looked up and saw them all chanting, ‘Mando, Mando.’” But the twenty-year-old Ramos was already traveling a path of drugs, women and deceit, while Laguna was too respectful of his craft to fritter away his talent. He stuck and twisted his jab early and often, draining Ramos’s body like a wet towel and stopping him on a bloody ninth-round technical knockout. “I met up with some bad people and I got caught up in methamphetamines and cocaine,” said Ramos years later. “I wasn’t right at all. Mentally my mind was not in the fight.
“Duran and I were supposed to fight at one point,” he added. “If I were to have been right, that would have been a great fight. I would have boxed him, but I never got to show my ability in boxing. I could box; I could punch moving backward. I swear I would have boxed Duran like that, punch and moving back and forth.”
Champion once more, the experienced Laguna was regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in the world. Then the unthinkable happened. In September 1970, he was outmaneuvered by an even better boxer, a skinny, broken-nosed Scot called Ken Buchanan, and lost his cherished title for the second time. It meant he would never get to defend against the rising Duran.
The closest the two Panamanian greats ever came to a box-off was a single sparring session. Though few were in the gym to witness it, the story later grew into the proportions of a mini-epic. Duran’s sparring sessions were feral portraits of precision. Even when training with stablemates, he gave and asked no quarter, and the fact that he worshipped Laguna meant nothing when they stepped between the ropes.
“Duran was coming up and he didn’t have a sparring partner one day,” said Laguna. “I didn’t want to spar with him because he was too young. I think I was preparing for a bout. I was too experienced, but he insisted. At first I thought we would take it easy, but Plomo urged Duran to go after me. When Duran came at me, I hit him with three quick hooks and opened a cut under his eye. That’s when the sparring session ended.”
It is not uncommon for fighters to have a selective memory when they have come off second best, and unsurprisingly Duran’s account differs. “I was sparring at Neco de la Guardia with Antonio Amaya,” he said. “I was young and I had done two rounds with Amaya. Laguna had no one to spar with. Right before, I had hit Amaya really hard. I was just starting my career, but I had already beaten Amaya badly. Then, I hear someone say that Laguna pays people to spar with him. And I say, ‘I’m the one.’
“In the first round I start hitting Laguna left and right, and I even move him a little bit. Laguna starts running around me, and I start hunting him down. When I stopped, he hit me with a left and broke my nose. When I saw the blood, I lost it and jumped on top of him and gave him some punches. Curro Dossman, the manager of Laguna, tells Laguna, ‘That Cholito is tough. He’ll be a champion one day.’ When we’re finished sparring, I’m drinking orange juice. I say, ‘Champ, give me something so I can go and eat.’ And he gives me a dollar-fifty and right then I felt like hitting him again. That’s the truth about my sparring with Laguna.”
Not far from where the incident occurred in the early Seventies, Plomo sits in a gym in Barrazza and retells his version. “Laguna and Amaya were stars from the same block and Duran wanted to fight with them. First, Duran got in there and was sparring two rounds with Amaya, but Curro Dossman stepped in and said, ‘Look, this is only sparring, we are not fighting here. If you want to fight, then fight with Laguna.’ And this is the truth, for those who tell otherwise then they are trying to cover Laguna. When Laguna got into the ring, he tried to jab Duran and Duran hit him twice with right hands and Laguna was stumbling.”
Didn’t Laguna break Duran’s nose? “No, mentira, mentira! All lies,” said the old sage, still protecting his fighter. “I remember watching Laguna fight Ortiz in the first fight in Panama. Their next two fights [won by Ortiz] were much different than the first one, where Laguna was using his cleverness. Ortiz would beat him in the two fights with the same punch. Laguna was a beautiful fighter with much speed and a good jab but he couldn’t change when he fought Ortiz. Compared to Duran, Laguna didn’t have intelligence in the ring. When Duran got hit he would move out of the way before the next punch came. Laguna would just stay there and receive punches.”
The two men did share a common opponent around this time in Lloyd Marshall, a dangerous American lightweight. Laguna had some problems in outpointing the heavy-handed Marshall, while two months later Duran, who had stopped five more opponents since his grudge match with Ernesto Marcel, beat him inside five rounds, on 29 May 1971.
“Laguna fought Lloyd Marshall, who had a really tough right hand,” remembered Duran. “Marshall hits Laguna with a right that knocks him on his ass but Laguna wins by decision, and Eleta gives me the fight with Marshall. The entire country said, ‘Now they’re really going to knock out Duran.’ When we’re in the dressing room, a boxer tells me to be careful with the right hand because that’s his most dangerous, most powerful punch.
“People were saying Marshall was going to knock me out, he was going to do this and that. Not very many people went to the fight. The guy hits me with the same right hand he hits Laguna with, even harder, and couldn’t even move me. The crowd said, ‘Awww,’ when he hit me, but he hit me twice and didn’t even move me. That kind of got to Marshall and that’s why I knocked him out.
“[In the States] I once went to a place where there were those coffeemakers that keep the coffee warm. I had never seen one like that in Panama and I told Eleta that I wanted one of those. He told me not to worry, that he was going to give me one of those when I would fight in Panama. When I won the fight with Marshall and got down from the ring, he was holding the coffeemaker in his hands.
” Duran gave his gloves from the fight to John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late President, who was at ringside as Eleta’s guest.
Laguna and Duran would never box each other again. Eleta did initiate talks about a possible bout between but realized there was little point in eliminating one of Panama’s two boxing idols. Both believe they would have handled the other with ease. “There was talk that Laguna was sick and that Eleta wanted me to fight him,” said Duran. “But he knew I would have destroyed him.” Not so, said Laguna: “I would have destroyed him in one round!”
Duran had a similar rivalry with another world champion, his childhood friend Alfonso “Peppermint” Frazer (Frazer would win the WBA light-welterweight title in 1972). Eleta managed both, and on a few occasions they sparred together. Neither fighter had moved past the ninth grade, as Frazer left school at fifteen and Duran at fourteen. Three years older and slightly bigger, Frazer remembered Duran and the struggles of his childhood.
“Duran and I had two different trainers, but we were stablemates. I was trained by Federico Plummer, and he had Plomo. When I sparred with Duran in Maranon he was getting great already and I had to put my hand on him. He was coming along good but he wasn’t up to me yet. So bang, I hit him, and Eleta came in and said, ‘You guys take it easy, you’re only practicing.’ But he tried to show me up. We only sparred once. Duran comes at you because he was young, strong and famous and he wanted to hurt everybody. He didn’t know the difference between sparring and fighting, so every time he got into the ring to spar, he would fight. He’d shoot his best punches and try to hurt everybody he worked with.”
As always, Plomo was just outside the ring feeding instructions to Duran. He knew that his fighter had to be that aggressive and fierce every second he was in the ring. Without that all-out intensity, Duran wouldn’t have been Duran. “They only had one sparring session together because Frazer was scared to get in the ring with Roberto,” said Plomo. “Roberto was just starting off and he didn’t have good form. [Frazer] hit him down, but Duran got right back up and started to hit Frazer and then his manager stepped in and said, ‘No fighting, no fighting. This is practice.’ That was the last time that Frazer would spar with him and always had excuses that he was sick or something like that. Duran had to train like that because he needed to practice against a certain style. For instance, if Roberto was going to fight Amaya, the other person he was sparring with had to have the same technique. That’s how he had to practice, according to the other guy’s style.”
Duran has yet another version of the story. “We were in Juan Demostenes Stadium and we stayed to spar with Peppermint Frazer. Frazer was going to fight with someone at that time, but I don’t remember who. The fans were saying to Frazer, ‘Wait till you see the punches you give Cholito because he doesn’t know nothing.’ Here comes the technique versus the brutality. I’ll never forget in the corner, Frazer tells me to hit him a little softer because ‘you’re hitting me too hard.’”
However, another of Duran’s sparring mates learned volumes from each three-minute class. “Duran used to hold back all the time because he was a perfect guy in the ring,” said former pro Mario Molo. “[He] never tried to knock me out in practice. He tried to learn and I would learn also. We both became better boxers. He tried to teach me while boxing me.” Molo, who later fell on hard times, can still be seen at boxing shows in Panama. “Mario Molo was one of the first sparrings we used,” said Plomo. “He would last longer [than others]. In general, they were not able to resist Duran’s blow during training much of the time. To Duran training time was like real fight time. ‘Hit me hard because I will hit you hard back,’ he used to say. He did not mind who it was, his brother or anyone. He used to request that the other hit as strong as if it were the real fight. This is what I call to train thoroughly. This is good work.”
EVERY SO often, the streetfighter in Roberto Duran reappeared. He found it hard to stay out of trouble. Even with Carlos Eleta by his side and with his potential unfolding in the ring, Duran wasn’t guaranteed a free pass with the law. “When I was still living out of the hotel, there were three big bars: Atlas, Ranchero and Balboa,” Duran recalled. “They all played music. My mom’s friend worked in a restaurant called El Limite. We used to invite my mom to eat where her friend worked. Once, I went to a dance and my mom’s friend was discussing something with another person. I intervened, but they started fighting. I tried to separate them, but I feel somebody’s hands on my neck from behind. I got him and I flipped him; he tried to stand up and I hit him. The man tried to get up again and I punched him.”
The police arrived as Duran was working the guy over. “Four guards fell on top of me. I was taken to jail that night in front of a judge named Belillo, who adored the policemen. We saw the judge, that son of a bitch, I hope he dies of cancer, and the other guy said that he was stopping the fight and that I hit him. Then he said that he was a policeman and he had tried to show me his badge. The judge wouldn’t let me talk. So I was sent to a jail called Cárcel Modelo, where they only sent the most violent criminals.”
Cárcel Modelo translates, apparently without irony, as Model Jail. An ugly, four-story block, it was built in 1925 in Panama City to house approximately 250 inmates. When Duran arrived there, it held over 1,000 men in appalling conditions. Cells built for three men now contained up to fifteen and prisoners awaiting trial were often kept for interminable periods. Torture, particularly of political detainess, was widely believed to take place there.
Duran found himself in a cell with men even more intimidating than himself. “There were two people: a Peruvian wrestler and a huge black man who looked like he killed somebody. The jail was called la preventiva [a system of remand where prisoners considered a serious risk are incarcerated before trial], where the very bad people went. When someone new arrived, they made all of the inmates line up. There were cells on both sides, and as I was walking inside, the prisoners started shouting, ‘Here comes a new one.’ They would take all the prisoners out and make them stand on a line. I heard them shouting, ‘Here comes fresh meat.’ At that time I was already boxing, with Eleta consolidating it. When the inmates saw me, they knew me. They all asked me, ‘What are you doing here? What are you doing Duran?’”
Despite his minor celebrity, in jail he was just another face. Duran knew he was in danger every minute he stayed in la preventiva. All his life, Duran had fought his way out of problems, and he always hit first. Now he was among desperate people who didn’t care who he was, and his fists meant nothing. For the first time he could remember, Duran needed protection. Luckily he found someone who would watch his back.
“We had to sleep on the floor,” said Duran. “The inmates gave me cardboard, another gave me a pillow and another one gave me a blanket. Later, some guy started to stare at me, a white guy, and he got closer and he told me he was Taras Bulba, the Peruvian wrestler. He told me he had lots of jewelry and he trafficked jewelry. He said that he had been there for long and that if he ever got out, he would never return to the country again. Then he told this huge black guy that if he tried something against me, he would have his head.”
Carlos Eleta could have gotten his prized fighter out with a phone call, but wanted to teach him a lesson. It was left to another influential figure to bail him out. “It was a good friend of mine who helped me in amateur boxing,” said Duran. “He was a rich man … a colonel at Cárcel Modelo. One morning I was cleaning the front part of the jail when an officer came up to me. I was sweeping the floor in the jail and he asked me why I was there. I told him what really happened.”
“Is it true?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then, he asked me for my mother, my uncles, my family, my grandma and everyone. He told me that he had grown up with them. Finally, he investigated what really happened and then they let me go. I went back to my cell to get my stuff. I said, ‘Taras Bulba, thank you and I’m gone.’
“People told me, ‘Manos de Piedra, remember us if s
omeday we get the chance to see one of your fights.’
“‘No problem,” I replied, and I was out of there. I went directly to see Carlos Eleta and told him how I had been freed. I told him he had not behaved well, for he should have tried to help me. He said he wanted me to have a punishment for what I had done. But I was young then and did not understand that.”
Plomo, as is so often the case, remembered the event slightly differently. “He once had a problem when he went to a club called Balboa en El Chorrillo. Duran liked dancing very much, and having fun, but he did not drink alcohol. He was there one day when a plainclothes policeman started hitting his wife. Duran walked towards him and told him to stop hitting her, that she was only a woman. The policeman told him to shut up unless he wanted to get beaten too. Duran broke the policeman’s jaw from the first blow. The policeman had tried to humiliate him, and though he was not wearing his uniform, being a policeman as he was, he thought he had the same authority as if in uniform. A couple of other policemen turned up and Duran explained to them that he had to hit him because the policeman had threatened to hit him. Yes, he was arrested.”
A lengthy prison sojourn could have destroyed Duran’s career at the very time it was about to take off. After defeating Lloyd Marshall and the Mexican Fermin Soto in Monterrey, he was booked on his first trip to the United States to fight on the undercard of Ken Buchanan’s lightweight title defense against Ismael Laguna, at Madison Square Garden, the most famous venue in world boxing.
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Two Old Men
Hands of Stone Page 8
