Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  As the fighters again returned to their corners between rounds, both had bumps under their eyes, with Duran’s blackening slightly. Yet Leonard just couldn’t snatch the momentum. A pattern had developed. Even when Leonard pot-shotted Duran from distance in the thirteenth, he couldn’t stop the Panamanian from bouncing off the ropes with a furious return rally. Leonard returned fire and landed a flurry in the final ten seconds of the round, an eye-catching tactic that would sneak him rounds throughout his career. Yet even when Leonard won rounds, it felt like Duran’s show.

  On his stool before the start of the fourteenth round, Duran saw Angelo Dundee point over at him and whisper in Leonard’s ear. Duran responded with a wave of a glove, urging Leonard to come forward. “Ray was fighting the wrong fight,” said Dundee. “When he was coming back to the corner, I pleaded with him to stick and move more. But Duran would get him into a corner and trap him.”

  After a relatively quiet fourteenth round, Padilla brought them together for the most important three minutes of their boxing lives. Neither fighter could afford to coast, yet Duran did not charge out as he had for most the fight. He now fired punches not in combination but individually, as if he owned the fight, content to make Leonard miss. He must have felt he had the decision in the bag.

  As the final bell sounded, Leonard raised his arms, but instead of the customary embrace Duran spurned him with a shove. “When he went to shake my hand, I told him to ‘get the hell out of here, you shit. You know you’re shit.’ I demonstrated to the American public that their idol wasn’t worth five cents,” said Duran. Was it the best moment of his career? “Of course. He was the man. He was the greatest thing that America had. He was an idol, a hero. To beat a hero, I became a bigger hero.”

  Duran whirled around the ring like a con released from solitary confinement, then jumped high in the air. I did it. You, Ray Leonard, are mierda.

  Before he headed back to wait for the final decision, Duran remembered something one of his enemies had said to him. Wilfred Benitez had been screaming obscentities at him the entire match. He broke free from Ray Arcel’s arms, pointed at the watching Benitez and grabbed his crotch. His cornerman picked him up and held him high in the air. Even with a welt purpling under his left eye, Duran knew there was only one outcome. The half smile on Leonard’s face suggested he knew too. The judges concurred.

  Although the bout was originally scored a split decision in several newspaper reports the next day, it was later reversed: Judge Harry Gibbs of England had it 145-144 for Duran, Angelo Poletti (Italy) scored it a draw at 147-all, and Raymond Baldeyrou (France) had Duran 146-144. Poletti came under considerable scrutiny after it was learned that he scored ten rounds even.

  Leonard knew it was extremely close but he also knew “just by the ambience of the evening” that the decision would not go his way. Duran had called out Leonard in front of La Casa de Piedra, and had won. “Eleta gave me about a million to fight Leonard but I just went and fought,” said Duran. “That’s all I ever did. People even said that Leonard was made by the television. I made myself by myself inside the ring. That’s why Leonard was afraid.”

  Duran later unbuckled his WBC belt, a green plastic affair made by Adidas, and handed it to gnarled old Freddie Brown. “Es tuya, te la has ganado.” “This is yours. I won this for you.”

  In Panama, a party began. In Guarare, a whole town rejoiced.

  Throughout the bout, Clara Samaniego had closed her eyes, wished away the brujos, clung to her faith like a child’s blanket and waited for the result. She sat with a reporter from La Critica and her daughter in the home her son had bought for her in the Los Andes neighborhood, clutching a mini-crucifix and a bible called “El Magnifico.” Tears streamed down her face as she heard the verdict. “I asked the Virgin del Carmen to help him because my son is good,” she said. “I remember when Roberto brought me $1.50 so that we could eat. It was a tough life. When I looked sad, Roberto would come to me and say, ‘Mama don’t you worry. When I am big, you’re going to see that everything will change.’”

  Leonard conceded to Panamanian journalist Juan Carlos Tapia the next morning at breakfast, in the company of Dundee, Arum and Elias Cordoba of the WBA that “Duran made me react like a man. Next time would be different.” Tapia believed that while Leonard knew he could win, Duran knew he would win. “After Leonard came back from the hospital, he told me that he lost the fight because he wanted to be more of a man than Duran,” said Tapia.

  Most other observers agreed. “Duran was a classic example of the importance of thinking in boxing,” said boxing sage and acclaimed author Budd Schulberg. “I covered the first Leonard fight and Leonard was a great fighter who was in there fighting Duran’s fight, punching with him. He was doing everything wrong.”

  A photo in Sports Illustrated encompassed the mood of adulation, jubilation and reward. Stuck in between Duran’s thumb, middle and index fingers, a wad of thick bills stood straight up as a wave of followers surrounded him at the press conference. Felicidad’s face was partially cut by the perforated edge of the photo, but her eyes were nestled somewhere in her lover’s slicked back hair. The couple had not yet married, but Duran had finally earned the respect of her family. She supported her future husband and understood a wife’s role in the process. Felicidad knew when to stay away before a fight and when to intervene in Roberto’s business.

  “She came to almost all of the fights,” said Plomo. “She would always come by the end, when there was only one week left. She was a very nervous person. She used to sit on the last row, for she did not like to watch the fight. Once she realized he had won the fight, she would return. She was a very nervous person, and preferred not to be present when he was fighting. She used to remain at the gym until the moment they would announce the fight was about to start. Then she would leave without watching the fight itself.”

  No doubt money would be spent recklessly in the coming hours, but the shirtless Duran was free, secure and wealthy. Leonard mourned in a grey and red Franklin warm-up, still a doe-eyed kid with his wife resting her head on his shoulder. Around him, his handlers talked prematurely about retirement.

  “One Mother, One Tear, One Champion,” ran the headline in La Critica the next day.

  Sixteen days later, Cleveland Denny, who had never recovered from being knocked unconscious on the undercard, died in hospital. He was twenty-four years old.

  14

  “No Peleo”

  “Anyone told me Duran would quit, I’d spit in his eye.”

  Ray Arcel, aged eighty-one

  RAY LEONARD FIGURED it out while he was running on a beach in Hawaii. Pounding over the strip of soft sand between lapping waves and palm trees, he arranged his thoughts and came to terms with defeat.

  Instead of heading home to heal after the Montreal war, Leonard had taken his family on vacation to Hawaii for two weeks’ thinking time. He took inventory of his life. So much had happened before, during and after the fight that he needed to let it all soak in. Only then would he make the decisions that mattered most. His family “was devastated,” he said. “My wife fainted. No one has ever seen me get hit like that or lose, so it was very traumatic. If you go back and watch the tapes you see people crying. My sister … they were all devastated.”

  As his feet sank into the sand on his morning run, confusion, self-doubt and anger turned to burning desire. Duran had beaten him, insulted his wife, derided his masculinity, dashed his aura of invincibility and battered his ego. Yet Leonard had also emerged stronger. By brawling with Duran, by going into the pit with him, Leonard had become not just a boxer but a fighter. He had satiated many who feared that he couldn’t take it. “They saw that I wasn’t just another network or Wide World of Sports figurine,” he said. “I was legit, and I could fight. I could give back as well as I could take it.”

  Before the fight, Duran had asked a reporter, what is a kid born yesterday going to teach me? But it was more about what Leonard had learned from Duran. He had lear
ned that he couldn’t allow another fighter to intimidate or anger him before a fight, and that he couldn’t beat a streetfighter in a slugfest. Hawaii allowed Leonard to face reality. He returned from his vacation set on revenge – but on his own terms.

  “When I was running on the beach in Hawaii everyone was telling me, ‘Man, that fight was close. Man, if you fight him the other way you’ll beat him.’ I got such support from fans that I told Mike [Trainer], ‘Let’s go back and fight him. Now, right away.’”

  On June 24, meanwhile, the new welterweight champion had landed in Panama to an estimated 700,000 fans jostling for a glimpse of him. It was declared Roberto Duran Day in Panama. “I want you to know this,” he told the crowd, pointing to his championship belt. “This does not really belong to me, but belongs to you, my people, my people who supported me and whom I love.” The crowd, misunderstanding where he was pointing, burst into laughter. “The Panamanian public always thinks the wrong thing. I grab the belt and say, this that is hanging here is for you guys,” said Duran. “I’m talking about the belt, and the Panamanians thought I was talking about a little further ‘down south.’ And after a while it became a big joke.”

  Fittingly, given how he would celebrate over the next few weeks, a new beer, Manos De Piedra, was brewed in his honor. No more dropping horses in Guarare to pay for liquor tabs, or shining lawyers’ shoes for pittance; now he had the money to buy the bar and the horse. Young, handsome and draped in the Armani that he and Chaflan used to admire in store windows, Duran had everything he could have dreamed of. With months of hard training and abstinence behind him, he embarked on an unending party, surrounded by a mass of sponging friends and family.

  Duran went back to New York to continue the party with his friends Abuela Lopez and Chivo Sagur. “Duran took them both to New York together with his own wife after he won in June,” said Plomo. “They remained there until September, and they would go out a lot together. He confessed having spent about $100,000 during that time in New York. He would pay for all the expenses.”

  Carlos Eleta, whose grip on his boxer had inevitably loosened as he became older, wealthier and more independent, faced a crucial decision. An extraordinarily lucrative offer was on the table for an immediate rematch with Leonard. Should he take it? The rich landowner worried about his fighter’s lifestyle. The way Duran was running off the rails it was not impossible that he could lose his next fight even if they selected a patsy.

  Ever since the day Eleta had caught Duran stealing coconuts in his backyard, he had felt a bond with the young tearaway. They had made millions together and their business relationship had turned into a familial closeness. But money had also evened the playing field and gave Duran freedom – or license. It was perhaps a sign of how Eleta’s control was slipping that he felt compelled to tie up a rematch with Leonard quickly, before Duran self-destructed; for he already suspected he could do little to stop him. “I made that rematch in three months because he started drinking,” said Eleta. “I said if he will fight again, he would lose to a second-rate fighter.”

  To this day, people are critical of Eleta’s decision. “I was surprised that he made the rematch that quickly,” said Luis DeCubas, who would manage Duran towards the end of his career. “If you know you have a fighter who’s going to celebrate for a while, then wait to make a rematch.” It was a decision that would come to haunt both fighter and manager. Angelo Dundee, however, knew that money was the most powerful incentive in boxing. “No, it wasn’t a surprise at all,” he said. “What the heck, the fight was meant to be.” By August, negotiations were underway, and the figures being suggested were mind-boggling: Duran was expected to make around $10 million and Leonard $7 million as pay-per-view TV continued to cause massive inflation in fighters’ purses. For Leonard, the rematch was inevitable. “It’s all about bragging rights,” he said. “To prove that you’re the best you fight the best. Even if you have to fight him again to prove it wasn’t a fluke. I knew the history of Duran and that’s why I asked for the rematch so soon because I knew he was in a celebratory mode. I caught him in the middle of that. This all goes back to tactics.”

  Judging by the mass of backslappers and party people surrounding him, Duran had no intention of staying in shape, or of fighting again any time soon. “I got back to Panama and I felt like the king of the world,” he said. “I start drinking and get fat, I am with women up and down. I go to New York and it’s the same thing there. I get up to two hundred and twenty-five pounds. Eleta should have never taken that fight that soon. He should have given me time to prepare myself. They said that they offered Eleta ten million dollars to accept the fight, but the truth is that I don’t know how much they gave him.”

  The rematch was officially signed by early September and scheduled for November 25, 1980 in the vast New Orleans Superdome. Duran started training late and had only about two months to lose what he claimed was seventy-eight pounds, though other reports claimed it was more likely that he had to reduce from 185 pounds rather than 225. Certainly he looked decidedly pudgy when he sat at ringside for the pitiful Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali title fight in Vegas on October 2, a travesty which saw the most famous and charismatic sportsman on the planet reduced to a stumbling punchbag. As soon as the beaten Ali’s retirement was announced, the Panamanian leapt into the press bench shouting in Spanish, “Now I’m the Greatest!” He was egged on by Latin commentators, who reached their microphones towards him, but others were embarrassed by his display and he was eventually asked, politely, to sit. Duran was reported as “flabby, scaling at least middleweight” by Boxing News editor Harry Mullan. Yet at that moment in boxing history, he was indeed the greatest.

  His preparation, in Miami Beach, continued badly and from the moment he and his posse eventually arrived in New Orleans, Eleta felt he could lose. “He committed so many mistakes in training without anybody knowing,” said the white-haired patrician years later. “I took him to New Orleans in plenty of time. They say he drank beer and ate too much. There were all these manzanillos hanging around. I told him to get all these people out of here but he said they were his friends and he needed them around. Some of them were mixed up in drugs. Some claimed Roberto was also, but I don’t think so.

  “His friends were bringing him food late at night. Ray Arcel came to me and said, ‘Carlos, something is wrong. I am training Roberto and he is not losing the weight. He’s gaining weight.’ I find out that someone in Panama, they call him Abuela, was taking food to his room, beer and this and that. He was telling Duran that the handlers don’t know what they are doing. Fifteen days before the fight he was twenty pounds over the weight. Arcel told me that I had to postpone the fight but when I told my friend the promoter, he told me it was impossible because he put a lot of money into that fight. I made him sign a contract where he has to put all the money fifteen days before the fight in Panama. When Duran entered the ring, that money came to us. I saved his purse in that fight.

  “That’s why I made the rematch with Leonard in a couple months. Roberto was out of control. I said if I don’t go and sign that fight he will go and lose with nobody. I tried to put everybody out, but he said, ‘I need these people. They are my people of Panama and I need those people to surround me.’ That was the worst thing that he could do. When you have forty or fifty people surrounding your fighter, to sleep with him, eat with him, talk to him and train, it’s impossible. After Montreal, he wouldn’t listen to Brown, Arcel or myself, he was on top of the world.”

  Things were not all well in the Leonard camp either. His long-time trainer Dave Jacobs quit after complaining that Leonard should have fought a tune-up bout first. “That sort of fight takes its toll on your body,” Jacobs said, referring to the grueling brawl in Montreal. “You need a tune-up to get the timing back. I love Sugar Ray but I don’t think it’s healthy for him to be fighting Duran right away.” An indifferent Leonard shrugged off the split.

  The Canadian tax department also weighed in with a claim for $2 mi
llion from Leonard’s purse for the first fight. The Olympic Installations Board, who organized the fight, had claimed they had been given an exemption from federal taxes, but the Government begged to differ. The Board reported a loss of $900,000 on the promotion when everyone else involved made a massive profit. Despite this, Angelo Dundee knew his man was focused as never before. “I was very pleased with the way Ray prepared for that fight,” said Dundee. “I told him not to let this guy psych him out. He was mad enough about the abuse Duran gave to his wife and he used it as motivation.”

  Duran did his best to play the part expected of him. “You’re going to see blood in this fight,” he told a New York press conference attended by both boxers three weeks before the event. “I don’t like to see clowns in the ring. I like to see boxers. To beat me, you have to come into the ring and fight me. He goes into the ring and tries to imitate Ali, but an imitator is a loser.” He then pushed his face close to Leonard’s and said, “I’m going to knock you out. I don’t like you.” Leonard kept his cool, praising Duran’s strength, toughness and intelligence and predicting only that it would be a great fight. A few days later, at another presser in New Orleans, he even joked, “He’s a lovable guy. I want my son to be just like him.”

  The Panamanian reporters who made the trip to New Orleans could read Duran better than anybody. They also reported that Flacco Bala had been dancing with young girls from Leonard’s camp. That only added to the intrigue. “Two foreign girls (who had been with Flacco Bala) arrived at Duran’s suite the morning before the confrontation,” wrote journalist Ricardo Borbua. “And it made us think and suspect that many disturbing things had passed before the fight because Duran either was not in optimal point of his physical conditioning or he had been traveling New Orleans in a bad state and little preparation. To say to the contrary would be dishonest.”