Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  “He was dangerous,” Garcia said in an interview years later, “but I knew how to work the ring. I shuffled back and forth and worked angles and kept him out of range, confusing him … I caught him with some good shots but he was too young and strong. He won the decision but after the fight he looked at me and said, ‘Cuban, you know a lot.’”

  The ten-round decision ended Duran’s streak of ten straight knockouts. “I made a mistake and took a pill to make weight,” said Duran. “I only needed to lose one pound and I ended up losing six pounds against Robinson Garcia. I tried to knock him out but I lost too much weight and I didn’t have enough strength. I think if he would have stood up to me and come to fight, I would have knocked him out, but he didn’t come to me. I learned something that night. Whenever I fought, I would learn from boxers because I was very smart. I would learn from them and find their defects.”

  Garcia was too intelligent to brawl with Duran. From the outset, he realized that the young tiger was too strong to stand in front of. Duran took this as an insult. To him, fighters were meant to fight, not hide. “Duran was all the time throwing his punches, but Garcia was blocking him all the time,” said Plomo. “Garcia was a good boxer. He had fought twice with Laguna, and had knocked him down twice. After this fight, Garcia was in New York to help us as a sparring partner during the fight with Buchanan, but he only lasted two days. He was not able to continue because Duran hurt him badly during the training.”

  Soon after the Garcia fight, it was reported that the World Boxing Council would order its junior lightweight champion, Ricardo Arredondo, to defend against Duran, the number one contender. But Duran had outgrown that weight. His sights were set instead on Ken Buchanan, the lightweight champion who had beaten his idol, Laguna. On 10 March 1972, Duran knocked out the little-known Francisco Munoz in the first round. Three months later, he would step into the ring to fight for the championship of the world.

  6

  The Scot

  “I’ll never forget you. Every time I take a piss I’ll think of you.”

  Ken Buchanan

  AT THE AGE of eight, Ken Buchanan went to the cinema with his father to watch The Joe Louis Story, a biopic of the famous heavyweight champion. “I kept thinking throughout the film, I want to be like that guy, champion of the world,” he recalled. “That was my inspiration.” A short time later, he walked into the Sparta Boxing Club, lied about his age, and within four months was boxing his first three-round bout.

  The Buchanans lived on a public housing estate near the Portobello district of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city. Word traveled through his school that little Kenny was a fighter, and that soon made him a target for bullies wanting to try him out. “I never lost one street fight,” he recounted with pride. “Kids used to pick fights with me, not because they didn’t like me, but some of these guys, I found out later on, would say, ‘That little guy Ken Buchanan in our school, did you know he was a boxer?’ So they challenged me. I didn’t want to fight; I thought it was stupid. But I beat them all. In fact it was good practice for me. I popped a few…”

  Little Kenny admired the then-fading Sugar Ray Robinson as the “ultimate” boxer and harnessed his own skills in a successful amateur career that spanned ten years and took him to the European Championships in Moscow in 1963 and a silver medal at a tournament in Germany in 1965. “All I wanted to be was a world champion, all my life was for this one goal,” he said. “Everything after that was secondary.” He turned professional at nineteen and, boxing in trademark tartan shorts, won thirty-three straight bouts before a controversial points loss in Italy when challenging for the European lightweight title. By the time he met Laguna, he had won thirty-six out of his thirty-seven bouts, but had never fought outside Europe, at a time when most of the world’s best lightweights were from Latin America or Japan.

  By Buchanan’s definition, a “patsy” was a challenger who had little chance of winning. Outside of Great Britain, a patsy might be categorized as soft or a “pussy,” a fighter lacking a hard edge and with a record bloated by weak opponents. Popular opinion outside Europe held that the Scot had built his record against the tea-and-crumpet crowd, and when Laguna’s American agent was instructed to “find someone Laguna would be sure to beat,” Buchanan seemed to fit the bill. “The people in Laguna’s camp thought I was a patsy,” said Buchanan. “He was an undisputed champ, both the WBA and WBC champ. But the WBC didn’t want to recognize me because they didn’t think I was a worthwhile opponent. Ismael was supposed to defend against [Mando] Ramos in a rematch. Ramos was in Panama and he got all cut up in the gyms, so they had to take him back to California. I ended up thanking Ramos. I got my shot and that was it.”

  Laguna was recognized as world champion by both of the sport’s international governing bodies, the US-based World Boxing Association (formerly the National Boxing Association), and the World Boxing Council, formed in 1963 and based in Mexico. When Laguna signed to fight Buchanan instead of Ramos, the WBC and the affiliated British Board withdrew their recognition of him as champion. The WBA, however, sanctioned the bout and it went ahead in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

  “A fellow Scotsman of mine fought [light-heavyweight champion] Jose Torres in Puerto Rico some years before that and the heat beat him that night,” said Buchanan. “Jose knocked him out and I think Ismael thought it was going to be much the same for himself. We shook hands, said hello. I didn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English, or Scottish, so we weren’t exactly on speaking terms. We went out and fought in the open-air stadium and it was 125 degrees. My manager was putting Vaseline on my face and my dad was putting suntan lotion on my back. I must be the first British boxer to win a world title and get a suntan at the same time.”

  Buchanan had a plan to neutralize Laguna’s famed left jab. “I would throw my jab a split second before he threw his,” said Buchanan. “I had to keep on top of him because he knew that this was the first time that I’d be boxing in this heat and I think he thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was. He was a wee bit surprised that I was taking it to him so much. I don’t know exactly when it happened, whether it was the sixth, eighth or tenth round, when Laguna finally realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought it would be.

  “I don’t know what kept me going that night, I really don’t. When we were younger my dad used to take my brother and I to swimming baths because his dad was drowned at sea. I built my strength up with swimming. We used to do underwater swimming. I could hold my breath and swim an Olympic swimming pool underwater. I think that’s what helped me with Laguna and the heat. I was used to holding my breath for several minutes.”

  It wasn’t until the late rounds that Buchanan felt he had the edge. “I think it was the eleventh or twelfth round where I thought that I had the faith, not much, but I thought, I have to keep pushing myself. I have to keep on top and tough with my jab. The last two or three rounds got it for me on a split decision. By then, all my hopes and dreams had been answered on that sunny afternoon in Puerto Rico.”

  Yet not a single British reporter was at ringside for his title win, partly because it was costly to send a writer all the way to Puerto Rico, partly because of indifference about a challenger who had failed to capture the public imagination back home, and partly because the British Board had refused to recognise it as a world title bout. Buchanan’s feeling of being a prophet rejected by his own people grew even stronger when he returned home. “When I got back, the British Boxing Board was going to fine me. They said they didn’t recognize WBA champions and didn’t give me permission to fight Laguna.”

  In the trade, however, people were taking notice. If the hard-bitten US fight scribes retained any doubts about Buchanan’s ability, they disappeared when the wiry Scot took on Donato Paduano, an unbeaten Canadian welterweight who outweighed him by a stone, at Madison Square Garden. Buchanan boxed rings round him, wowed the New York crowd and was voted Fighter of the Year for 1970 by the American Boxing Writers Ass
ociation, a rare accolade for a European boxer. A magnificent, even-tempered boxer who could brawl when needed, the soft-spoken Scot didn’t lose his cool in the face of adversity.

  Buchanan was due to make his first defense against Mando Ramos in a bout which the WBC deigned to recognize for the title. However, Ramos pulled out a few days before and instead Buchanan trounced Ruben Navarro in Los Angeles. Ramos’s sorry decline would be not untypical of Latin American champions. “What happened was that he had postponed the fight for a month, so I had been in the camp for six weeks already and I’m worn out,” recalled Ramos. “I fucked up. I went out to this jazz bar [and] we’re in the back snorting coke and my trainer comes in and everybody leaves the room except for me. This pretty little girl comes in and asks, ‘You looking for a party?’ We went into a room and we had sex and I caught some disease. Then, I went home and had sex with my wife and gave it to her and she divorced me. So I was going through a lot of mental stuff.”

  For a short period, Buchanan was the undisputed world lightweight champion, but in June that year he forfeited the WBC belt after a contractual dispute, deepening his bitterness towards the sport’s governing bodies. Then came the rematch with Laguna in September 1971 at the Garden, the night that Roberto Duran took out Benny Huertas in one round. “I got cut a couple times in the second fight. Laguna poked me in the eye in the first two rounds,” Buchanan recalled. “My left eye was blowing up like a balloon. So my trainer Eddie Thomas took a razor blade and he slit my left eye open at the bottom to let all the blood out and have the swelling go down. Sylvester Stallone owes me money for that because he stole that off me. He bloody well did. Did you ever see that happen?”

  In the eleventh round an inadvertent clash of heads opened another cut over Buchanan’s right eye. “In those final rounds, the doctor kept coming to my corner to check my eye because there was so much blood, but my manager would stick his thumb in the cut over my right eye and showed the doctor my left eye and it wasn’t deep. It was OK. And just as the doctor had turned to go away, my trainer takes some grease from his hand and puts it in the cut. Once they said, ‘Seconds out,’ he put the grease right in the cut. They couldn’t see it. Eddie Thomas was a great cornerman. It saved me, and saved the championship. I know they would have stopped it.”

  Buchanan wasn’t the only one who appreciated his cornerman’s magic. “That was a helluva job Eddie Thomas did in Buchanan’s corner,” said fight publicist Harold Conrad in the book The Hardest Game. “I’ve watched a lot of corners and I’ve never seen one worked better. Thomas was like an icicle. No matter what was happening in the ring, how much damage was being done to his guy, he never got flustered in there. He watched every move and seemed to hand out the right advice, for he turned his guy over to fighting right when he had to. But during the rounds he kept getting ready for what he had to do during the rest period. That minute really flies by when you’ve got problems. That man gives the impression of knowing more about all aspects of working a corner than anyone around right now.”

  The cut that Thomas slit would need ten stitches, eight on the outside and two on the inside, and Buchanan would later need plastic surgery to remove the scar tissue. Laguna, the idol of Panama, never climbed through the ropes again.

  The bout between Buchanan and Duran wasn’t just about a championship, but revenge. “One day, he came to me and told me about the fight where Laguna fought with Buchanan and Laguna lost,” said Duran’s mother, Clara. “Roberto did not like this. Then Eleta came to talk to me and told me Roberto wanted to fight with Buchanan. I reminded him my son was only twenty years old, but since he wanted to do this fight, I had to sign some papers giving my authorization; he asked me to do it. At the time, when Duran had to fight I felt sick and was taken to hospital to be operated on. After the operation I learned they wanted to tell Roberto about it, so I asked the doctor to let me travel instead, so that Roberto did not get worried before the fight. I got my permission to leave the hospital. When I arrived home, Roberto called me and asked me whether I was sick. I told him everything was OK. I was holding the scar the operation had left, but calmed him down telling him I was all right.”

  Buchanan’s camp saw nothing complicated in Duran’s aggressive style and felt their man would take charge in the later rounds, when they expected the challenger to tire. “Duran didn’t have an unorthodox style, he was a complete fighter who could punch to the body and to the head, move good,” said Buchanan’s American cornerman, Gil Clancy. “There wasn’t anything special that we did for the fight except to tell Kenny to use his jab a lot and keep moving. We were going to wait for Duran to get tired.” There was nothing illogical about Clancy’s plan. Having seen Duran in the States only against Huertas, and knowing his history of quick destruction, he expected the young boxer to “blow up” after a few rounds.

  Duran also had his usual pre-fight dramas. “I went to train with Plomo in Chiriqui,” said Duran. “I’m at a hotel, the National Hotel and when I’m done training I throw myself in the pool and I’m already hot and sweaty. I get this fever and I feel like I’m going to die. I call Eleta and tell him everything that happened. I started crying because I thought I was going to lose my chance to fight for the world championship. I come back and three or four days later I’m fine. The doctor tells me I’m ready to fight. I’m happy as a ham and they send me to New York.”

  Before Duran left for New York, he made the plane and hotel reservations for a dear friend. “I was gaining fame in boxing,” Duran recalled. “When I was boxing like eight or ten rounds, Chaflan came to me and asked me that if I fought for the championship one day, if I would take him. So I promised him I would. For my world championship fight, I asked Eleta to bring Chaflan. I came a week before the fight to train at Grossinger’s [and] Eleta brought Chaflan over. I was in New York staying at the Mayflower Hotel. I was very happy to see him because it was a promise I made to him and I kept it.”

  Duran wasn’t the type of person to ignore those who had helped him when he couldn’t afford a meal. It wasn’t long before the smiling Chaflan made himself at home. However, this wasn’t Panama, where everybody knew his name. To the New Yorkers, he was a crazy guy panhandling in the bars. Look at this guy’s dance. He’s fucking crazy. It would mark the last time he and Duran traveled together.

  “Eleta took Chaflan to his room. That night Carlos couldn’t find him, but the next morning he found him sleeping in the bathtub,” said Duran. “He thought it was a bed. Chaflan would go to the bars and try to make money like he did in Panama. When I realized about it, I told him that if he did it again and the police caught him he wouldn’t be able to see the fight and would have to go back to Panama and never come back. So he stopped dancing.”

  ON JUNE 13, 1972, Buchanan and Duran signed contracts for the fight at a press conference at Les Champs Restaurant in midtown Manhattan, then sat down to a roast beef lunch. It was the first time they had met. Garden publicity director John Condon did his best to play up the challenger’s rough past for the assembled hacks. “Street fighting in Panama is as popular as baseball is in America,” he said. Duran, speaking through an interpreter, predicted he would knock out the champion within nine rounds, and added that he thought Ismael Laguna was a better boxer.

  Buchanan, six years his senior and playing the elder statesman, responded rather loftily, “Duran is a young lad so I guess he’s entitled to boast if he wants to, but I don’t believe in predicting and prefer to do my talking in the ring. He hasn’t really fought anyone of note. There are probably other lightweights who have worked their way up the ratings who are more deserving of a title shot, but the Garden offered me a $125,000 guarantee for this fight and I took it.” Buchanan said a Panamanian promoter had offered him $150,000 for the fight but he turned it down in favour of the Garden, where he had been treated well in the past.

  Film of Duran knocking out Hiroshi Kobayashi was shown, then John Condon asked if anyone wanted to see it again in slow motion. “I thought that wa
s slow motion,” dead-panned Buchanan. The Scot and his party left immediately after lunch to set up training quarters at the famous Grossingers country club in the Catskill Mountains, 100 miles north of New York City.

  Buchanan’s sarcastic remark was not lost on Duran. “I had an interview, and they put a video of mine on the television. Ken Buchanan is next to me with some trainer, and I’m watching my own fight. Buchanan had a bread with butter, and this writer asks, ‘Why aren’t you looking at Duran’s video?’ He said, ‘He’s too slow for me,’ and I start laughing. He didn’t know the surprise I had waiting for him.”

  Duran trained at the nearby Concord Hotel, but Buchanan didn’t take time to study him. Since beating Laguna a second time, he had easily won two non-title bouts and was in great shape. He had heard the reports about how strong this young Panamanian was but felt confident he could handle him. “I didn’t even watch when Duran fought Huertas,” said Buchanan. “I knew he was winning all of these fights by knockout. He was young and apparently he wanted to emulate Ismael. When we fought he was just too keen at times to get on with it. When the fight goes on, you could see that when he threw a punch and missed, he got real frustrated. If you could say what he felt, he was like, ‘Why don’t you stand still because I want to hit you?’”

  Days before the fight, Duran had to deal with his first set of “groupies,” something he attributed to dirty tricks by his opponent’s camp. “The week after I was in New York, they got news that I wasn’t an easy fight,” Duran said. “American girls would call me over the phone at eleven-thirty in the morning, ‘Mister Duran, come and spend the weekend with me because you look so good.’ I told Plomo that all these girls are calling me and he said, ‘Don’t pay attention because it’s just a trick.’ I tell him, ‘What the hell am I going to do in New York, I don’t even know how to take a bus or anything like that.’ Freddie Brown tells me, ‘It’s just Buchanan’s people and because they saw you train they’re trying to distract you. They know you’re not going to be an easy fight at all.’”