Not a minute later DeJesus was back on the canvas from a Duran right to the side of his head. Referee Isaac Herrera crouched close to the fallen fighter’s head and counted him out, conscious but spent. As soon as he signaled the end, DeJesus rose and walked back to the corner.
Duran bounced over to Eleta and threw his arms around his manager. With security forgotten, fans flooded the ring. A journalist jabbed a microphone into Duran’s face and he smiled, happy amid chaos. Soon he disappeared among back-slapping military brass. A white-haired and angry Ray Arcel tried to fight through the melee to reach his fighter, to no avail. Somewhere else, Eleta was talking to a reporter about a possible return bout with Buchanan. “After Duran hit him in the kidney early in the fight I knew it was over,” he said.
“With Heart and Truth Cholo Retains Title,” declared the headline in La Critica.
9
Hands of Stone
“I almost killed that guy.”
Roberto Duran
FROM JULY 1974 to February 1975, Duran took just twenty rounds to dispose of six opponents. Flash Gallego fell in five in July, while Adalberto Vanegas, Masataka Takayama and Andres Salgado were all blown away in first-round knockouts. Only the bout against Japan’s Takayama, who was dropped three times in short order, was a title defense. “I was the matchmaker for that bout with Takayama [in Costa Rica],” said Luis Spada, who worked for Carlos Eleta. “Roberto knocks the guy out in like a hundred seconds, and they are mad at me because it was so quick. I said, ‘You told me to make the bout and I did.’”
Puerto Rican Hector Matta was the only one of the six to go the distance, losing a ten-rounder in San Juan. Matta, whose father trained fighting cocks as well as boxers, fought well; Duran was under par, and some of the local boxing writers even called the bout a draw. Esteban DeJesus fought in the co-main event, but a “rubber” between him and Duran was unlikely given that DeJesus now seemed unable to make 135 pounds.
Duran was also forced to pull out of a non-title fight at Madison Square Garden that August. Carlos Eleta was unwilling to sign an agreement to defend against Ken Buchanan within ninety days of the Barreto bout, even though he apparently had a two-year-old contract to give the Scot his chance, and so the New York State Athletic Commission suspended Duran from boxing in the state for more than a year. Commission chairman Edwin Dooley then called off the Barreto bout. Before Duran headed back to Panama, a reporter went to his room at the Mayflower Hotel seeking an interview with the champ. “Duran is in the shower and he is ready to go in a motorcade to a party in Brooklyn where everyone wants to see him,” said translator Luis Henriquez. He hinted that there might be “a physical confrontation” if any reporter attempted to interview the champ. “I didn’t like being pressured,” was Eleta’s memory of the ban.
Instead, a lightweight from Portland, Oregon, entered the picture. Ray Lampkin had dreamed of being a fighter since his childhood, but at first lacked the discipline needed to excel in the fight game. He made the Olympic national qualifiers as an amateur but not the finals. “I smoked cigarettes for ten years,” Lampkin admitted. “Even though I was winning fights in the amateurs, I wasn’t a good fighter. I was in no shape because I was still smoking. All the fights that I had lost, I ran out of gas in the last round.”
Lampkin looked to turn pro but had no trainer or manager. While promoter Sam Singleton tried to find him a spot on a local card, the boxer worked three jobs out of necessity. His plea to “just find me someone to fight” was repeated often, until one day in 1972 it was answered. “They found me someone to fight named Gordon ‘Newsboy’ Johnson,” said Lampkin. “I didn’t even know who he was, so I just got out there and started to train. I knew some guy who told me, ‘You’re going to get some newspapers thrown at you.’ And I said, ‘He might be throwing some newspapers, but I’ll be throwing punches.’”
After winning the decision in his pro debut, Lampkin woke up to what was possible. “If I did this well without being in the proper shape, imagine what I could do if I stopped doing the things that were holding me back. I didn’t want to wonder how good I could really be.” He didn’t lose in his first twenty pro fights, the only blemish being a single draw. Lampkin became something of a local attraction in Oregon, but his progress was slow. “I decided if I was going to make a move in the boxing game, then I had to get a manager,” he said. “Some guys who have trainers and managers don’t even go ten-zero, I thought.”
He eventually hooked up with Mike “Motormouth” Morton, a Runyonesque mainstay of the Pacific Northwest boxing scene, and early in 1973 traveled to Puerto Rico to fight Esteban DeJesus for the North American Boxing Federation lightweight title, with only Morton by his side. “I went over there without my trainer Jack Brackey, who was the best teacher of the game that I ever had,” said Lampkin. “He taught me how to be a pro, and my manager wouldn’t send him over there with me. Since the promoter only provided two plane tickets, he was left out. Fighting DeJesus without my trainer was one of the biggest mistakes of my career.”
Not only a trainer and teacher: Brackey was also Lampkin’s shadow. When the sun went down and Lampkin didn’t want to finish his routine, it was Brackey who prodded him. When the young fighter needed a pick-me-up in the latter rounds of a fight, it was Brackey who put his hands around his waist and urged him back out there. When the left hook was thrown too wide, Brackey was there to shorten it up. When Lampkin got knocked down, Brackey went with him. Now Lampkin, who had never traveled to another country, was alone.
“When I got to San Juan, there were a lot of things I didn’t like. People were telling me, ‘Don’t drink the water.’ I was so scared to drink the water and by the time the fight came around I was so weak. My manager should have gotten me bottled water or something.”
Fighting in the new Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Rato Hey was also a problem. “It was a brand new ring and it was real slippery,” said Lampkin. “Every time I tried to swing or throw a punch, I was slipping. In the first round, DeJesus hit me with a right hand and I went down. He dropped me for the first time in my life. I got up and went twelve rounds with him. I slipped two or three times during the fight. If we had prepared ourselves for this, and checked the ring, we would have known beforehand that there was a rod in the middle and that we needed rubber shoes. I knew that I could have beat him if we were on even ground.”
Despite the decision loss, the fight proved that Lampkin could compete with the elite in his division, and several months later he got his wish for “even ground” when he fought DeJesus again at New York Felt Forum. “I had inflamed gallstones in this fight,” said Lampkin. “It may sound like excuses, but I shouldn’t even have been fighting. I couldn’t do any roadwork, but their mindset was that I could wait and see a doctor [when I got back to] Oregon. I was like, ‘But I could die now.’”
Lampkin survived the painful disorder, which his doctor would later note as a “miracle.” Once again, however, he lost the decision. “I have respect for every fighter because I don’t want to disrespect anybody,” Lampkin said, “but I still think that I could have beaten Esteban. I was too fast for him, and I could box.
“I was always hoping to meet up with Duran,” Lampkin said. “I figured the longer I stayed up there, one day he would have to fight me. When they finally make the fight, they tell me that I’m going to have to go to Panama. He wouldn’t fight me anywhere else. I told him that I would go straight to his house and fight.”
The match was made for Nuevo Panama, Panama City, on 2 March 1975. Lampkin knew that the man he was facing had more to offer than attack. “People never gave Duran credit for being such a good defensive fighter,” said Lampkin. “Boy, he wasn’t easy to hit.”
To Lampkin, the logic of the fight played out like this: DeJesus beat Duran, Lampkin almost beat DeJesus, therefore Lampkin had a good chance to dethrone Duran. Lampkin didn’t regard Duran as an unstoppable force, even though the champion was coming off a trio of first-round knockouts. “They were t
rying to make Duran out to be this Superman character,” said Lampkin. “He was human, and when you cut him, he bled, just like I did. They were acting like he couldn’t be beat, and I saw Esteban do it. They tried to intimidate me and tell me that if I beat Duran, I probably wouldn’t leave there alive. I told them that if I die, then I would be a dead champion, because if I beat him they were going to have to kill me.”
Lampkin and his team arrived in Panama on a Friday before the fight on Sunday. “No fight could prepare me for Duran,” Lampkin reminisced. “Duran had his own style, and there wasn’t another fighter who had that same style. My sparring partners, well, none of them could really fight like Duran. Duran’s always looking to punch, and had pretty good speed and power. He also had a good right hand, a weird style and was very hard to hit. I just trained hoping to make him fight my fight. I didn’t worry about his style. I wanted to make him adjust to my style. I figured if I landed everything I wanted to land, he would fall.”
Although lack of conditioning would occasionally blight Duran’s career, as a lightweight he was young, strong and savvy enough to prevail even when his energy ran low. He knew when to clinch or claw, hit low, take needed breaks, go toward the ropes or plant himself in the middle of the ring. It was usually enough to keep him out of trouble or allow him to catch his breath. Despite being able to hide his flaws from certain boxers, others quickly recognized Duran’s mouth agape searching for that second wind, along with a decrease in punches, and then attacked. Duran’s power, for a lightweight, was a hot topic. It was a straight right hand often prefaced by a left hook to the body. If the one punched missed, several were fired from every angle. And with the mind of a crafty veteran, Duran knew that his punches might leave him off balance. So Duran perfected the punch-and-hold tactic that threw off all the challengers who expected the staple bum-rush to leave him vulnerable for counters. Those challengers who ran from Duran were caught in the late rounds. On Panama’s boisterous street corners over dominoes, many wondered aloud how many rounds it would take for Duran to destroy Lampkin.
“They kept him away from me,” Lampkin added. “They knew he would try stuff like that, and they didn’t want me and him together. The only time I saw Duran was in the ring. They didn’t want us to be at the same weigh-in or nothing. In fact, he weighed in first, and then they got him out of there … before he would act the fool.”
Keeping Duran hidden before the bout not only stopped any possible physical or verbal assault, but left the challenger in the dark. “I didn’t know who he was,” Lampkin remembered. “I really didn’t. I kept asking, ‘Is that Duran there?’ And they said, ‘No, that’s not him.’ I didn’t know when I was ever going to see the guy.” One thing that Lampkin dreaded was the heat. Duran had spent his life training in veritable tanning-salon gyms; Lampkin hadn’t. This was Duran’s land.
“The building is hot, there’s no air-conditioning at all,” said Lampkin. “It’s like an oven with the temperature at five hundred degrees ... and it was like the summertime back there. When you get there you don’t think about that stuff; we never knew. All you do is get in there, go to the dressing room, and come out when it’s time to fight. We thought it was like any other arena.”
By the time Lampkin was walking down through the aisles of the Nuevo Panama Gym, however, everything was forgotten: the jungle heat, the crowd, the pressure. It was man against man, and the American began well. Duran cut off the ring, using his jab to set up three left hooks to the face, but Lampkin, whose upright style and sculpted body made him seem much the bigger man, responded with a clean straight right that made Duran lose his footing. “When I hit him with a body shot, he would kick his leg up real high, and people thought he was trying to kick me,” Lampkin said. “I can’t remember what round it was, but I know I hurt him.”
There was nothing squeamish about Lampkin. He elbowed Duran in the head during a clinch in the second round, a warning that any dirty stuff would be countered in kind. Clean shots bounced off Duran’s devilish beard throughout the round, which Lampkin earned.
Through the early rounds, Duran looked to have a slight edge. Breathing heavily by the fourth, he scored with combinations and staggered Lampkin in the fifth with a clubbing right cross. Legs weazy, but mind intact, Lampkin wobbled around the ring, took another right and instinctively fell into and wrestled Duran to the floor. After the brief delay, Duran refused the head and cracked Lampkin with a left to the ribs that sent him hobbling back to his cornermen.
But always Lampkin fought back. Even inside, a space Duran called his own, Lampkin often ended several close-quarter exchanges with a chopping right and scored on the outside with a left-right-left combination. Few men had hit Duran like that, and several rounds were too close to call. Still, Duran was landing the bigger punches and between the seventh and eighth rounds an issue arose in Lampkin’s corner. It was reported in the New York Times that Lampkin was forcibly sent out by his handlers for the eighth round, though it wasn’t explained why.
The pace was torrid as neither man looked to back down. Even those blinded by bias had to admire the American’s persistence. Few lightweights could have taken the punishment Duran gave Lampkin and kept going forward. In the ninth, Lampkin walked through a punishing left hook to the body and a pair of rights to the head; his courage never wavered. Duran concentrated on a huge welt that had formed under Lampkin’s left eye, banging the puss out with a vicious uppercut.
Duran forged on and caught his second wind in the late rounds. By the end of round thirteen, both of Lampkin’s cheeks were swollen and his step was heavy. He had given his soul, yet still he wouldn’t fall. He took solace in the middle of the ring and raged back at Duran.
“He was a guy who would do anything to win,” Lampkin said. “He was a dirty guy and I knew that but he was the main guy. I figured I was holding my own. All I wanted … to keep him in the kitchen and hit him with some good shots and knock him out. But it was very hard to do. I was the first one to take him fourteen rounds. What got me was that my corner had defeated me when they ran out of water. It was like amateur night in my corner.”
Lampkin plodded out of his corner for round fourteen; he wouldn’t return the same fighter. Within the first thirty seconds, Duran had landed a short, glancing left hook that set him up. Lampkin, near the ropes, dropped his guard for a split second. A whipping left hook sent him to the canvas and out on his back, his head bouncing off the floor like a weight dropped on cement. Ringsiders cringed at the sickening force of the fall. Even before the referee had knelt down to count, Lampkin tried to raise his head, but couldn’t. He had no chance of beating the count. By that point, ringsiders were more concerned about his health.
As soon as the hook had landed, Duran knew the possibility that something grave had occurred. “I almost killed the guy,” he noted later. Handlers, security guards and medics began to crowd around Lampkin, a wounded man lying among strangers. “I remember him taking me down and my head hit the canvas pretty hard and I tried to get up and I have a picture of me on my elbows,” said Lampkin. “From the slamming of my head, all of a sudden I tried to raise up real fast and then I just fell back out.”
Duran capped the nightmare off with his most infamous quote: “Next time I send him to the morgue.” The media ran with it, and it became emblematic of the Panamanian’s perceived callousness and brute hostility. However, Duran’s camp denied that their fighter was a monster. “No, those are lies,” said Plomo. “The guy was half-dead, he did not need to frighten him any further. They took him to hospital on a stretcher because he failed to react.”
“I told him that I never had been knocked out in my life and I don’t feel that he would have done it if I had water in my corner,” said Lampkin. “I sensed that we were both tiring. They weren’t expecting me to last, nobody did, especially the Panamanian people. When I went back there they told me that I had beaten Duran, but I didn’t win the fight. His daughter and son told me, ‘We’ve never met you Mister Lampk
in, but my daddy said you were his toughest fight.’”
The punch, and the quote, would cement Duran’s reputation. Society believed that Duran didn’t have the capacity to feel compassion, not in the ring. The media blew up his quote on the morgue, thus enhancing Duran’s ugliness. “[Lampkin] could have died after that fight,” said Duran. “I told him I would kill him next time. I fought him with very little training. I lost too much weight; I was dying. I always have a quality that I would never lose … I have a gesture where you don’t know which two hands are coming. It’s the moment where you think the right is coming and it’s the left, and then you expect the left and I hit you with the right. That’s why I had a lot of boxers confused, I was just too smart for them.” Duran would call Lampkin his toughest challenger.
WBA President and ringside physician Dr Elias Cordoba originally called Lampkin’s condition “delicate but not serious.” However, it wasn’t until thirty minutes after reaching the local hospital that Lampkin regained consciousness. According to WBA doctor Keith Arthur, the reason for Lampkin’s delayed consciousness was “a severe accumulation of blood in the thorax which diminished the blood flow to the brain.” At this point, the number one contender was fighting for his life. A wire story even reported that Lampkin had died.
At the Santo Thomas Hospital, Lampkin went into convulsions. “They took me back to the dressing room or somewhere and everybody was all over me,” Lampkin recalled. “‘Give him some room,’ and then someone said, ‘Get this man to a hospital.’ I can vaguely remember that, and then I went to the hospital.”
Although Duran claims that he, Toti and his mother visited Lampkin at the hospital twice after the fight, Lampkin doesn’t recall it. “Sure, Roberto and I went to the hospital together,” said Toti Samaniego. “Lampkin was acting crazy and was talking about a rematch and stuff like that.” Plomo also remembered the visit, as Duran was worried if “the guy was alive or dead.”
Hands of Stone Page 15
