“Edwin was much tougher,” said Duran afterwards. “All Adolpho did tonight was run and complain about my hitting him with low blows. I’ve fought guys on a bicycle, but this guy was on a motorcycle.” Years later, from atop his apartment building in New York City, Adolpho seemed to be delusional about the result. “I don’t want to say nothing about ref and judge but to me they all crooks. I beat Duran but Duran’s got connections.”
Rumors spread of a possible showdown with junior lightweight champ Alexis Arguello, but the negotiations failed. While Arguello was moving up to the lightweight division, Duran was abandoning it. “It was promotions,” said Arguello. “They never signed nothing; it was only talking. It would have been a great fight, but we moved to higher weight classes.
“I met him after I won my first title from Ruben Olivares. He’s a good person who carries himself really well. There’s nothing that I saw that he behaved badly except one time when I was invited by Don King to fight in Vegas. I was in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace and he came up to me and I thought he was coming to say hello. Instead he was pushing me and pushing me, telling me to sign the contract or he would kill me. I told Duran, ‘I’m a serious person. Don’t push me.’ That was the only rough encounter I had with Duran. In my heart I think he was one of the greatest lightweights in boxing history.”
Arguello, from Nicaragua, was diplomatic but always felt that he had the tools to take Duran. “Latin fighters are tough fighters with big hearts and courage, especially Duran. In Latin America, there has been a variety of styles. For example, Miguel Canto of Mexico was a great boxer; Monzon, from Argentina, was a heavy hitter with a good heart; Duran was short, but a heavy puncher with good movement, good head movement and combinations. I don’t want to disrespect a great fighter. What I can tell you is that it would have been a great clash. It would have been a collision where we both don’t know … I could say that I would have won and he could say he could beat me. Time catches up to all of us in the sport of boxing. It’s something that a friend of mine used to tell me, ‘What you do when you enter, they do to you when you go out.’ That’s life. We’re born, we live and we die.”
At the end of July 1978, it was reported that Duran had broken two fingers on his right hand in a car accident in Panama and would be out until October. Conflicting reports suggested a thumb injury, others said that Duran was feigning for commercial reasons, presumably so he would not yet have to surrender his lightweight titles, which increased his marquee value while he fought non-title bouts.
Duran went back to Panama after defeating Viruet, gained yet more weight and prepared to fight light-middleweight Ezequiel Obando on September 1, 1978. It would reveal if Duran looked comfortable at the higher weight and if his punches were destructive against a bigger man. Duran came in on the welterweight limit of 147 pounds while Obando was four pounds over at 151.
“Obando was a guy with huge muscles, tall and looked like he was a bodybuilder,” said Duran. “Eleta tells me, ‘I want you to fight him anyway because I want people to see you.’ I said, ‘Give me the fight, I don’t give a damn.’ When the guy comes into the ring he wants to impress me with his physique. He wanted to knock me out, but he didn’t know that I could hit that hard. He came in again and my hand was already in the air ready to catch him. I hit him so hard with one punch that you could have counted up to a thousand and he wouldn’t have gotten back up.” Duran needed only two rounds to dispose of Obando, who was too green to give him a test.
Having cleaned up his division and run out of credible challengers, Duran issued a statement that October from Panama City, possibly at the behest of the publicity-minded Don King, in which he challenged “all the champions in the other divisions, from bantamweight up to middleweight, to fight me.” The statement went on, “I’ll fight them over the weight, for my title or for theirs. This challenge goes for champions like Carlos Zarate, Wilfredo Gomez, Danny Lopez, Alexis Arguello, Pipino Cuevas, Carlos Palomino, Samuel Serrano, Saensak Muangsurin, Antonio Cervantes and Rocky Mattioli. I’d like to become the first man in history to win four different world titles. The welterweight, junior welterweight and junior middleweight titles are all within my reach.”
Don King’s grip on the heavyweight crown had loosened and he needed a new global star. Duran was it. King had lost the inside track with heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali after a failed attempt to drive a wedge between Ali and his manager, Herbert Muhammad, and consequently missed out on some of the biggest fight promotions of the late Seventies. At the same time, many of the sport’s names now came from outside the United States, including the imperious Carlos Monzon and the classy Alexis Arguello. Duran was probably the most saleable of them all to US TV audiences, provided the right opponents could be found.
On November 4, newspapers reported that Duran had signed a four-fight contract worth $500,000 with Madison Square Garden. His first appearance was due against light-welterweight Monroe Brooks, followed by a defense of his lightweight title aganst leading WBA contender Alfredo Pitalua, then a fight against light-welterweight champion Antonio Cervantes, and finally a challenge to welterweight champion Carlos Palomino. That, at least, was the plan.
FIRST UP WAS the ranking black boxer Monroe Brooks, at the Garden on December 8. A streetfighter in his youth, Brooks was ready for the challenge. “I had no fear of him,” said Brooks. “I didn’t care if it was the Hands of Stone, the Hands of Walls or anything. If I could I’d fight him again right now, I would. I love the man. He was good for boxing.”
Brooks was born in Midland, Texas, and was introduced to the fight game at the age of nine through a relative. “I had a cousin who lived a house down from me and he used to have a bag hanging from a tree. He would just hit the bag every now and then, and he would go to the park and there would be a bunch of guys who would put the gloves and box. I got to the point to where I wouldn’t do what he told me. One day I follow him and he said, ‘I’m going to stop your little ass.’” His cousin forced him to box the other neighborhood youths. “I whupped all of them. He made me box every one of them, and he was so shocked because I was so young.
“I heard about a gym that was starting up and I wanted to go see this boxing gym. I snuck away from home, walked in and I told the coach I wanted to box. There must have been a hundred kids in the gym and I pointed them out and said, ‘I can whup all these boys.’”
The coach, Sergeant Hamilton, responded the same way Plomo had to an enthusiastic young Duran. He explained that boxing could not be picked up without proper training. Hamilton had seen many youngsters arrive at the gym willing to fight, only to vanish at the first sign of violence. “He just so happened to have three sons who boxed,” said Brooks. “So I whipped his three sons, and everyone else they put in front of me. I just realized I was already a fighter. If you hit me I was going to hit you back. I was a fighter on the street.”
The meanest cats on the block don’t always make the best boxers, but Brooks learned his craft during eight years as an amateur and would go on to win forty-eight fights as a pro, thirty-three by knockout, and to hold a North American Boxing Federation title. He drew inspiration from an unlikely source. “My mom would beat up anybody,” he said. “She was a fighter who took nothing from nobody on the streets or off the streets. She raised six kids by herself. My mother always came to my fights. If there was a fight in town my mother was going to be there. That’s where I got my fighting from, my mom.”
Brooks beat so many Mexican opponents that he was labeled “the Mexican Killer.” He remembered, “The hardest puncher was Rudy Barro, a Filipino. Let me put it this way; after that fight I said to myself, ‘Damn, you take a good punch.’ Every time this guy hit me it felt like a truck running into me. Not just a truck, a Mack truck.”
After losing to Adolpho Viruet, Brooks realized he was battling more than his opponents. “I realized that I was anemic. I actually think I lost three fights from being anemic. I know I lost my world title fight for being anemic. I couldn
’t get off with punches and do things that I could always do. I was shocked to be beat by a boxer like that. I didn’t know exactly, but I found out when I fought for the world title. In fact I almost died.”
Brooks traveled to the Far East to challenge for the light-welterweight championship. “In Thailand, my blood was so low that they could hardly find a pulse for me. I beat the boy nine rounds straight and they stopped the fight because they said I was too tired to finish,” Brooks recalled. “I was going to make that fifteenth round but they didn’t want me to come through with that title. I beat that boy pitiful.
“I started losing energy from about the seventh round. Everything started to become blurry to me and it was like I was drunk. I told my trainer that something wasn’t right. But he didn’t know I was anemic, and there was nothing we could do about it. He was just giving me instructions to fight. I fought like a champion. After that fight I stayed positive all through my boxing career. If a person is going to lose their positive thoughts, they should just quit before they get hurt.”
Brooks, who boxed at light-welterweight (junior welterweight), was also stepping up in weight. “I actually had to pick up seven pounds to fight Duran. I didn’t feel as if I lost any strength. What I did to mess up my fight with Duran was I pulled a muscle sparring with Wilfred Benitez in New York. I told Jackie McCoy about it at the time. He said, ‘Let’s go home. Let’s get on the plane.’ And I said, ‘No, Jackie, you pull me out of this fight and there’s going to be a fight between me and you.’ I didn’t have no fear of Duran. He couldn’t intimidate me. I was the one who had the mouth.” Back at the Garden, his old stomping grounds, Duran weighed in at 147, surprisingly heavier than Brooks at 143, and was even bigger by the time he entered the ring. To many boxing scribes, the Panamanian was too short, too small, and was making a tactical mistake in jumping up two weight categories.
On December 8, 1978 at the Garden, Duran had two things to prove: that he could punch and take a punch in the 147-pound class. He answered accordingly as he nailed the taller, wiry strong Brooks with a left hook as the first round ended. Then, after absorbing some sharp punches from Brooks, he began to methodically chop him down. In the fourth, Duran almost completely submerged his right into Brooks’ face, and in the sixth he ferociously spun Brooks’ head with a jarring left hook.
After punishing Brooks for the first seven rounds, Duran forced him against the ropes and landed a left hook with the force of a bat hitting a tree. The manner in which he set up Brooks was magnificent, as he perfectly positioned his body to the left of Brooks, assuming that there would be a slight opening under his right arm. There was and Duran delivered the decisive blow to the body. Brooks slumped to the canvas, and Mercante threw up his arms and halted the bout as the fighter reached his feet. The victory was official at 1:59 of round eight.
The damage might have come sooner had Duran not had to suffer mightily to lose twenty-one pounds from his 168-pound frame during training. Even the critics admitted that Duran was a legitimate welterweight contender. “Something told me that I was watching greatness,” said boxing analyst Steve Farhood, who covered the bout. “Basically he kicked the crap out of a world class fighter.”
At least Brooks had refused to run, and twenty-five years later could still hold his head high. “You have to box, box, box Duran,” he said. “You know Duran was more of a slugger but he had some boxing technique also. I had the boxing skills that were phenomenal and I felt I had enough to do what I had to do. Anemia didn’t play any part, not in this fight.” Were there any weaknesses in Duran? “The only weakness I felt was in me.” Later a security guard at a high school in Los Angeles, Brooks still thinks of Duran. Fighting him was an “honor,” but he has one last wish for his Panamanian friend: “Man, Duran better not ever get hit by Rudy Barro.”
In April, Duran walked through the game Jimmy Heair, veteran of ninety bouts, to win a unanimous decision in Vegas. The rugged, blond-haired Tennessee native, who had never been knocked down, took an awful beating but somehow stayed on his feet till the end. “I have never seen anything more brutal than that in all of my years,” said commentator Howard Cosell. Nit-pickers complained that Duran’s punch was not as percussive as it had been and that he should have stopped Heair. People held him to the highest standard. He was an all-time great and fans expected him to fight like one every time he got in the ring.
It was clear that, despite the four-fight program mapped out for him, Duran was going to relinquish his lightweight title. Both the WBA and the WBC had ordered him to make his next defense against different contenders – Alfredo Pitalua and Jim Watt respectively. Not only was that impossible, but he had also outgrown the weight. At the zenith of his profession, he abandoned his WBC and WBA titles in January 1979. His future lay with bigger men. No longer would he always be the strongest man in the ring, or punch the hardest, or have the scariest reputation. He was about to head into the toughest division in boxing.
12
“The Monster’s Loose”
“I wanted to graduate, win a world title and retire by thirty.”
Carlos Palomino
EVERY TIME DURAN hit New York he created a spectacle, whether he was playing softball in Central Park or piling into a steak at Victor’s Café 52, surrounded by acolytes. He had grown fond of Gotham and the city embraced him. Raucous crowds of Latin well-wishers flocked to his training sessions, while actors, singers and famous athletes sought his company. .
“When I won the world championship, the Yankees invited me to the clubhouse,” said Duran. “The pitcher Luis Tiant … gave me passes and shirts and everything from the locker room. The game wasn’t started yet, but Reggie Jackson told me he was going to dedicate a home run to me and after the game he would give me the bat. I said, ‘Okay,’ and he hit the home run. At the end of the game he called me to the locker room and said, ‘Remember what I told you? This is the bat and I want to give it to you. But I want you to know something. When I hit that home run I cracked the bat.’ He gave it to me and I carried it back to Panama. Someone eventually stole it from me.”
In his huge white cap, satin baseball jacket, massive shades and gong-sized medallions, the young prizefighter was every inch the barrio star, swaggering into Gleason’s Gym to a pounding ghettoblaster or stopping traffic as he signed autographs and posed for photos on the sidewalk. His favorite hangout was Victor’s, which would relocate in 1980 from Columbus and 71st Street to West 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan. It was owned by Victor del Corral, who became a great friend of Duran’s, and was a popular haunt for budding TV, film and music stars.
Now the most feared fighter, pound for pound, in the world, Duran was reaching the peak of his popularity when he signed to fight former welterweight champion Carlos Palomino. The welterweight division was entering perhaps the most thrilling phase in its history and Duran was about to assault a division full of glamor, danger, intrigue and money. Chance had thrown up four of the most exciting young boxers ever to compete together in one weight class at the same time. The WBA champion, Pipino “the Assassin” Cuevas, was a daunting Mexican puncher of almost criminal ferocity, a butcher of challengers. The WBC champion was Puerto Rican wunderkind Wilfred Benitez, a defensive wizard of bewildering virtuosity. And fast rising through the ranks were two prodigious contenders: Olympic gold medallist Sugar Ray Leonard, a showboating genius, and the menacing Detroit knockout artist Thomas Hearns. Amazingly, as of February 1979 Leonard was the oldest of the quartet at twenty-two; Cuevas had just turned twenty-one, while Benitez and Hearns were only twenty. Together, this fearsome foursome promised a decade of ferocious competition.
Not to be forgotten was Palomino, who Benitez had recently deposed. Rugged and experienced, a fierce body puncher with great stamina, he was a formidable obstacle to anyone seeking welterweight glory. Palomino was the second of eleven boys born in a small town in the state of Sonora, Mexico. Life was frugal but his mother drummed ambition into him, and after crossing the border to Lo
s Angeles to find work he took up boxing. His amateur career blossomed after he joined the US Army and he won All-Army and All-Service titles and almost made the 1972 Olympic team before turning pro. In 1976, he accomplished his first goal by knocking out Britain’s John Stracey for the WBC welterweight title. In the same year, Palomino walked down the aisle to accept a diploma in recreational administration from Long Beach State University.
Palomino treated boxing as a profession, one he pursued with dedication but never loved. He had three goals: graduate from college, win a world welterweight championship, and retire by age thirty, and with two of them accomplished he was already planning for a career once his ring days were over. He dabbled in acting, including an appearance in the popular TV comedy series Taxi.
A stand-still hard-hitter who would go into the trenches, the moustachioed Mexican successfully defended his title seven times but suffered two lengthy layoffs due to bone cracks in his right hand and had been inactive for eight months when he took on Benitez in January 1979. Not only did he face one of the world’s finest instinctive fighters but also he was in Benitez’s backyard. “No doubt in my mind that going into the Benitez fight that I had to knock this guy out,” said Palomino. “I had seen too many times where a Mexican guy came to Puerto Rico and got a bad decision. I didn’t even want to go there, but the WBC made me go. The fight was outdoors and there was a canopy over the ring. It was so hot that I lost fourteen pounds of water in that fight. All my fights had been in Vegas and LA inside the auditorium, so I was not used to this weather.”
Hands of Stone Page 20
