Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  The mind games began. Leonard’s trainer Angelo Dundee made a point of telling reporters that “three things trouble Duran – speed, a left hand and a calculated fight. You need a well regimented fighter to lick him and that’s my guy.” Ray Arcel, however, believed Duran’s experience would be the deciding factor. Duran, well versed in street pyschology, was already winding himself up for the encounter. When he knew that Leonard was watching him work out in the gym one day, he skipped rope in a squatting position.

  Nearly a month after the win over Nsubuga, Duran watched helplessly as his record of ten straight knockout title defenses was broken by Puerto Rican featherweight and bantamweight legend Wilfredo Gomez. On February 3, 1980, Gomez knocked out Colombia’s Ruben Valdes. Gomez had been trained by Plomo when he began his professional career in Panama.

  Three weeks later, Duran scored his fifty-fifth inside-the-distance win when he punished Wellington Wheatley of Ecuador with two early knockdowns before dropping him for keeps with a right forty-four seconds into the sixth round. “Wheatley countered quite well at times and seemed to jolt Duran a couple of times in the first round with rights,” reported Boxing News, “but Duran took charge in the second when a cracking right hand lead to the chin put Wheatley down on the seat of his trunks against the ropes.” Wheatley got up at four and survived the round but by the fifth he was wilting and took another count from a right-hander to the back of the neck. Duran lowered the boom in the sixth, nailing his foe with a right and then a cruel short left hook, forcing the referee to step in without bothering to count.

  “The monster’s loose and on his way to the welterweight title,” said NBC-TV boxing adviser Dr Ferdie Pacheco, at ringside in Las Vegas.

  13

  El Macho

  A dictionary translation of the Spanish word macho captures the essence of Latin American masculinity. Besides male and masculine, the word means tough, strong, stupid, big, huge, splendid, terrific and doubles as a slang term for a sledgehammer.

  Duncan Green, Faces of Latin America

  IT STARTED OUT as a leisurely stroll through the streets of Montreal. Ray Leonard, his wife and childhood sweetheart Juanita, trainer Angelo Dundee and his wife were taking a break from the pressure cooker atmosphere before a fight. The weeks leading up to a big bout lie heavy with anxiety, sickness and tension and this was a brief afternoon escape from the hype. But in the summer of 1980, nobody could touch Ray Leonard. He was young, rich and approachable, and had all the talent he could handle.

  So when Leonard saw Roberto Duran coming towards him, he smiled that world-seeping-through-his-white-teeth smile and waited for a friendly, or at least civil, response. Instead Duran, who was once described as cursing better in English than most Americans, unleashed a ferocious volley of abuse. He then gave Leonard the finger. “Duran comes around and starts really giving it to Ray and Juanita, talking about ‘I’m going to kill your husband’ and stuff like that,” remembered Dundee. “That got to Ray. He couldn’t believe that Duran could be so crude in front of his wife. He was a family man and father.” Leonard later told the Los Angeles Times, “He taunted me. He cursed my mother, my children, my wife. He said unbelievable things and I let them get to me.”

  No punches were exchanged but Duran had left his mark. Leonard may have been a supremely talented boxer, but his antagonist was a streetfighter who walked around Panama with a 680-pound lion named Walla strapped to his arm (a present from Rigoberto Paredes, the former head of the Panama racetrack). Perhaps Leonard was already beginning to wonder whether this fight was a mistake.

  His first choice of opponent had been WBA champion Pipino Cuevas in a unification match, but this would have left Don King facing “a severe cold in the wallet,” according to Boxing News. King, an arch-manipulator, contacted WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who in turn called the Panamanian Government. His pitch was that Leonard was doing the dirty to a son of Panama and that the WBA was conniving to allow Cuevas to fight Leonard. The Government then leaned on the Panama-based WBA, which in turn put the squeeze on its own champion, Cuevas. Cuevas was suddenly forced to pull out with an “injury” and Duran, King’s fighter, was back in the picture.

  Having originally prepared for the Mexican bomber, Leonard was already in shape. Indeed some felt Cuevas would have been a more dangerous opponent. In eight contests at 147 pounds, Duran had scored only four knockouts. “I think a few boxers lost respect for me,” Duran told Sports Illustrated’s William Nack before the Montreal showdown. “Some said I lost my ability to punch with power. But let me tell you something: if a man is born with a good punch, a change in weight makes no difference.”

  The bout was finally signed on April 13, but not without immense backstage horse-trading. Bob Arum and Don King, who could barely stand the sight of each other, were forced to form a brief, unholy alliance to co-promote the fight, sharing the dais for the first time. “It was the first time in history that Arum and King worked together,” said Eleta. “I brought them to Panama so we could all work this out.” Arum at the time had twenty fighters on his books, led by Marvin Hagler, while King had thirteen fighters, with Duran and Larry Holmes at the top. As if to endorse the encounter and its significance, the New York Boxing Writers’ Association met in May and selected Sugar Ray Leonard as their 1979 Fighter of the Year, Leonard’s trainer Angelo Dundee as Manager of the Year, and Duran and Muhammad Ali as their Fighters of the Decade.

  By then, Leonard was beginning to get an idea of the man he would face. He had done his best to respond with a half-hearted “I’ll kill you” when the fighters met on April 23 at a press conference in the New York Waldorf Astoria, but the threat sounded not only out of character but hollow. Minutes before, Duran had held center stage at the podium. He had brought his personal jeweler along for the ride and was kitted out like a ghetto daddy, with over $37,000 of bling on his person – not including his expensive clothes. He looked and acted like he owned the world. In one account of what followed, Duran “cuffed” Leonard after a scuffle broke out while both men tried on a souvenir boxing glove. “He got into my head,” said Leonard. “He pissed me off and challenged my head.”

  Duran, brilliant in the pre-fight mind games, promised that his contempt for Leonard was no gimmick. He didn’t hate the American idol so much as what he stood for. “My father was so happy because that fight represented so much,” said his son Chavo, who was only six at the time. “It showed all the fans, especially the people in Panama, the people that know boxing, that he was not just one of the crowd. My father had many fights but Leonard was very special because he had won a gold medal at the Olympic Games and was the golden kid in the U.S. at the time.”

  Duran reviled the kid who grew up with a “golden spoon” in his mouth. He saw Leonard as the product of a privileged childhood. He knew he lacked Leonard’s telegenic charisma, but he suspected that Leonard lacked the toughness that one can only earn through battle. He considered the American not a man but a commodity, a glossy figure enhanced by the media. He wanted to expose this counterfeit.

  Duran might not have been the favorite, but the Canadians took him to their hearts. To them, there was nothing fake about the man. His outbursts came from his soul. Duran could mingle with the people without first making sure there was a camera close by, while Leonard smiled the smile of a stranger who expected to be the chosen one. While Duran wore a T-shirt that read “BonJour” to woo the Montreal French, Leonard, who had won his gold medal in Montreal, couldn’t understand the colder reception he received. “That took me for a loop,” said Leonard. “I thought that I was the adopted son because of the Olympics and the exposure. But man, when I got there, went into the ring and they were booing me and embraced Duran, it threw me for a loop.”

  Through the papers, Leonard expressed his concerns, claiming that Duran’s tough guy act worked in the ring, but “he should leave it there.” It was obvious that he didn’t know where Duran was coming from. He made the mistake of treating Duran as a normal human bein
g and expected he would act like one, but this was not someone who was going to heed advice about acting in a civil manner. When people spoke of hungry fighters, in Duran’s case it was literally true.

  Every time Leonard reacted to an insult, he was becoming a prop in the Panamanian’s show. He had never been confronted by an opponent so tactless and virile, but who still combined malevolence with a touch of charm. Duran didn’t live by any guidelines. He acted without thought for the repercussions. His boorishness shocked Leonard because this wildman could back up his words. One fan encapsulated the phenomenon when he said, “Duran was just simpler than Leonard.” Duran had made him lose his composure without throwing a punch. This was no longer a multi-million-dollar sports event; it was a behind-the-bike-racks fistfight.

  Angelo Dundee understood what was happening to his fighter mentally but couldn’t stop it. Mentally, he had lost Leonard. Dundee and Duran had known each other since Roberto was a raw young terror at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami. With his jet-black hair, baby smile and a right hand that would push your mouthpiece back into your teeth, Duran terrorized sparring partners. “I’ve known Roberto since he was a youngster and he was one of the sharpest guys out there,” said Dundee. “He could con you just by giving a look. He used to psych out a lot of guys before they got into the ring. Just like Ali, he was good at getting the psychological edge. He was this macho guy, so charismatic, and overshadowed all these guys by putting on an act for each opponent.” As for Ray Arcel and Freddie Brown, men he had watched and admired for years, Dundee came up with the classic line, “Those guys, they’re older than water.”

  In the gym, Duran was often pitted against bigger men yet referred to anyone willing to challenge him as a maricon, or homosexual. He was used to hitting guys twenty pounds heavier. The ring was his space, where there was no room for mercy or pity. Stepping through the ropes after a fight to the cold concrete, his hatred subsided and even Leonard would remark at what a gentleman Duran was when they squared up for a Sprite commercial with their sons.

  At the Fifth Street Gym, Dundee was also privy to his weaknesses. By this time it was no secret that Duran enjoyed his drink and his women, but when he faced a serious challenge the bullshit subsided. Inside the Fifth Street Gym, Duran was pitted against Dundee’s Cuban fighter Douglass Valliant. Valliant had once challenged Carlos Ortiz for the lightweight title. He was a showman, the one type of boxer that didn’t agree with Duran. Good fighters emphasizing angle, speed and movement could frustrate him. “My guy gave Roberto fits in the ring,” said Dundee. “He was a sticker-mover type guy, a good fighter who was in the ring with some great champions, and Duran didn’t know what to do with him.” Surely Leonard would box him the same way.

  The fact Canadians supported Duran also baffled the Leonard camp. “Duran captured the crowd, and they were all pulling for him,” said Dundee. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think those people would be pulling for Duran. Ray was a nice kid, good-looking guy, but in certain places they like certain fighters. I thought we had an edge going in there but they were rooting and hustling for Duran like they were doing for Ali in Zaire.” Ali had turned an entire country against George Foreman in Zaire and Duran was building a cult following in Canada.

  While he liked to talk tough, others saw it as something the media overplayed. For Eleta, the glitch in translation was a bit bothersome. Did Duran really want to “kill” Leonard? “He didn’t mean anything by it,” said Eleta. “It was taken out of context by the American fans. Every round, as we say in Spanish and it doesn’t mean the same in translation, they tried to kill each other. They put everything they had into that fight.” Leonard responded in kind because he did not want to be seen to back down. “Duran was very antagonistic and had a bully mentality,” said Leonard. “He challenged you and if you didn’t stand up, he knew he had you.”

  But Duran wasn’t listening. “Whatever Leonard had to say, I didn’t give a damn,” he said.

  Leonard and Duran needed each other. With every great sports figure comes another individual able to extract the pockets of bravery on reserve for the moments that test the will unlike any other. For Ali, it came in the form of a walking tree trunk named Joe Frazier. There were thousands of other rivals like Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano, Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta, or Sandy Saddler and Willie Pep who forced each other to locate such reserves.

  Boxing provides the ultimate stage for pre-event hype because the public can hear every word. It is intense and in-your-face and the boxer can’t back down. In other sports it is often performed on the field out of earshot. In boxing, the press conferences allow the frustrations, whether real or contrived, to surface. When Leonard had his masculinity challenged, he felt the need to respond. Ignoring it would be akin to being labeled a punk. His problem was that he couldn’t release the emotions; they followed him to the opening bell. Duran needed hate to brew in his corner, while Leonard exuded calm awareness. Duran turned his opponents into voodoo dolls before fights. Leonard could be ruthless and arrogant but preferred calculation.

  “I had seen Duran on a number of occasions, and I was in Las Vegas … and I think it was the Esteban DeJesus fight,” remembers Leonard. “At the time I was a professional fighter. I was sitting behind Jackie Gleason, who I loved because I loved The Honeymooners. I told him that I wanted to fight [Duran]. Gleason turned around and said, ‘Son, do yourself a favor and don’t even think about it because he will kill you.’ I stopped watching The Honeymooners. He burst my bubble man.”

  Duran promised war. He had knocked down a horse with a single right hand. How do you hurt a man so possessed? Sugar Ray thought he had an answer. With his christian names taken from one of the world’s greatest entertainers, Ray Charles, and his nickname from the greatest-ever boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson, he was to many the savior of the sport. That didn’t always make him popular. “Ray Charles Leonard was a prodigy, and no one in boxing really likes a prodigy,” wrote one biographer. “For most old-timers, who were made to pay their dues by even older-timers, approval for young fighters is bestowed reluctantly and in inverse proportion to the amount of punishment they’ve taken. In this ultimate school of hard knocks, all natural talent is suspect.”

  Despite the belief in some quarters that he had had it easy, growing up in Wilmington, North Carolina, wasn’t exactly the high life. According to Leonard, everything the family had “we shared.” As one of seven children born to Cicero and Getha, he moved to Washington, D.C., when he was four and his mother, a nursing assistant, and father, who worked in a produce market, put in long hours. “There was a feeling of inferiority from not having anything,” Leonard told the New York Times in 1979. “There were never clothes to wear or money for things as simple as school field trips. Even lunch money was a problem.”

  When Leonard won the gold medal in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal with a victory over Cuba’s Andres Aldama, he seemed destined for riches in every aspect of his life. His publicity campaign heralded what was to come with boxer Oscar De La Hoya and Michael Jordan in basketball and he displayed an even temperament and good manners. In 1979, Leonard took a magnificent boxer in Wilfred Benitez and stopped him with six seconds remaining in the fifteenth round. The young fighter proved that he could bang with the world’s best.

  Leonard was on the verge of superstardom. He learned from the Benitez bout that it took more than just great physical attributes to be and beat the best. “It required psychological warfare and mental stability,” he said. “It required more heart than you can ever imagine … I mean when the going gets tough and your lungs are burning, when your arms are tired and they feel like weights, you push for that hidden reservoir of strength. That’s when I realized it was far more than being physical or having raw talent.”

  In 1980, at twenty-nine years old, Duran was taking on the biggest draw since Ali. To Duran, every fight was a one-dollar brawl in Chorrillo. Fighting was survival. Boxing was his only option, while Leonard could have been a success in anyth
ing. The truth about Leonard’s childhood didn’t matter to Duran. He despised Leonard and his image because in his mind, the American hadn’t achieved anything. Many years later, on his couch at his home in Cangrejo, Duran traveled back to the man who brought him to the brink of fame, then failure. “Leonard was shitting his pants from the fear he had,” Duran said. “I didn’t like Leonard because he was the pretty boy for the Americans and I didn’t care less about him. I used to tell myself that I was going to beat the shit out of that American so he will respect us Latin Americans.”

  “Actually there was nothing that could prepare you for Duran,” said Leonard. “Duran was a fight within itself. Duran was a crazed, talented, technical boxer. He was a better boxer than people gave him credit for and a devastating puncher … an extremely good defensive fighter who was very elusive. He was not a stationary target.”

  Leonard had been schooled in the business side of the sport from the day he met his influential lawyer, Mike Trainer, a University of Maryland law school graduate. Many boxing journalists and promoters would marvel at his ability to make wallet-busting deals for his fighter. After Leonard’s post-Olympics college scholarship at the University of Maryland, Trainer also found him a job at the school’s Parks and Planning Department. He and twenty associates lent Leonard $1,000 each to sponsor Sugar Ray Leonard Inc., with Leonard being its sole stockholder. Having seen a laughable contract sent to Leonard by Don King, Trainer made a counter offer. “It’s the dumbest document I ever saw in my entire life,” said Trainer about King’s offer. “So I said to Ray, ‘If you’re really thinking about doing it and if you really think you can box, why do you want to sell part of yourself? Why don’t we just set it up like when I went into business? You go to the bank and borrow some money then pay off your loan and everything is fine.’”