Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  Before traveling to Vegas, Duran visited the grave of Torrijos, pledging to bring back the WBC junior middleweight for the late dictator. But Benitez, who was set to make nearly $1.5 million to Duran’s $750,000, was the 9–5 favorite, The Puerto Rican favorite. Duran was now thirty, seven years older than Benitez. Benitez was coming in at 43-1-1, with 26 knockouts, while Duran was 74-2, with losses to Leonard and DeJesus. Benitez stepped off the scale at 152¼ pounds to Duran’s 152½. Despite how hard Duran had trained, he couldn’t change the reality that the bigger Benitez was coming down in weight and that he would be punching up at the five-foot-ten Puerto Rican. How would Duran handle the counterpuncher when he sat on the ropes and waited? Would he come at him or cut off the ring? Would Benitez be able to take a punch from Hands of Stone?

  There were hints on the eve of the showdown that Benitez had matured. His father talked before the bout about his son’s focus and even praised his training methods. Benitez admitted that he couldn’t return to his country without the belt. “It’s not so much the title that is motivating Wilfred,” said Jim Jacobs. “He knows about Duran as a legend, and now Wilfred wants the glory and the recognition as the greatest Latin fighter.”

  Although Gregorio and Jacobs (co-manager with Bill Cayton) knew the tendencies of the unpredictable Benitez, they didn’t allow room for speculation during the tense minutes before the young prodigy entered the ring. “Nobody talks tactics to Wilfred during the weeks he is training for the fight,” said Jacobs to the Washington Post. “He is his own man; he has his own mind. But around fight time, he does listen to his father. Wilfred has been fighting since he was eight years old, and all those years when he went back to his corner, his father was always there. Let’s just say that he trusts his father on fight night.”

  Before the fight began, traditional rivalry spilled over. At a New York press conference, Duran took a swing at Benitez and was clipped by a right hand in return. Duran also taunted Gregorio Benitez, under the false impression that he would be capable of backing up his words later in the ring. It was Papa Benitez who noted that his son had never taken a fight so seriously. “If I lose this one I will not be able to come back home to my country,” Wilfred told himself. “I have to win this one.”

  In January 1982, the judges watched intently as, nearly two minutes into the bout, Duran’s head was jolted backwards by a right-hand lead in an otherwise even first round. Soon the truth emerged: Duran was a very good 154-pounder, while Benitez was a more natural, magnificent one. Some fighters go into a fight with the belief that they had done everything right in training, from ringwork to conditioning. This was no flabby Duran; he was 152 pounds weeks before the fight, and truly believed he was prepared for fifteen rounds. But this was vintage Benitez, and as the referee Richard Green stepped between the combatants at the conclusion of each round, the ugly truth emerged. For each punch Duran landed, his opponent stuck two or three back in his face.

  Realizing that he had to push Benitez against the ropes and bully him, Duran took the initiative in the third round and plunged toward the Puerto Rican with the intensity of a boy who had just seen his own blood in a streetfight. However, Duran’s strategy of throwing punches hoping that a lucky one would land left him vulnerable. Every time Duran rushed the ropes, he ran into fists, and as the round closed out he took a huge straight right that completely threw off his equilibrium.

  Balance was an art perfected by Benitez, ring magician. Benitez used his supreme reflexes and balance to land a gorgeous triple-hook to the body and head in the fourth round. His performance was as riveting as Leonard’s in New Orleans, and this time Duran was being punished more. It was in this round that Duran connected on his first worthwhile punch of the evening, a sorry stat which was more revealing than all of the punches Benitez had landed to that point. The excuse that Duran had overtrained had already hit the airwaves.

  If there was one punch in Benitez’s arsenal that found the range as the fight progressed, it was his right uppercut. He showcased it in the seventh round. While playing his risky hide-and-seek game along the ropes, Benitez landed the ferocious uppercut directly on Duran’s left eye. Blood seeped from the eye immediately.

  Duran’s handlers managed to keep the bleeding under control, but Duran was now being punished every time he stepped in range. Benitez landed big one-punch shots in the ninth and tenth rounds as Duran showed his usual aggression with little thought behind his actions. Instead of trying to enter and fight on the inside with the jab, he walked directly into the gunfire. At times, it appeared he was worn out as he shook his arms out on several occasions. Tired and unable to throw punches in rapid succession, Duran continued to plead with his arms.

  Before the fourteenth round began, Arcel for the last time implored his fighter, “You can still win this fight.” Benitez proceeded to bang Duran to the body as if he had heard the comment. Duran was pushed around by the bigger fighter, which was a rarity, and spent too much time against the ropes. Every time Duran looked to quicken the pace, Benitez would stop him with smart jabs and superior defense.

  As both fighters came out at the start of the fifteenth round, there was little doubt that Benitez had taken this one personally. And with less than a minute remaining Benitez went to the ropes and motioned Duran to come to him one more time as if to remind him, this is my night. It was his way of closing off his virtuoso performance. It was Benitez’s bolo punch, his Ali shuffle, and not only did he taunt Duran, but he called for Duran and then punished him. Few fighters would have exuded such bravado. Duran resisted one last time and brushed Benitez off as the final bell sounded.

  There would be no late-night quarrels over a pitcher of beer as to who was the better fighter that night in Vegas; Benitez won by a mile. Even staunch Duran fans had to acknowledge defeat. Ringside scribes struggled to find a round, let alone rounds for Duran. Scoring on the ten-point must system, Lou Tabbat had it 145-141, Dave Moretti, 144-141, and Hal Miller scored it 143-142 with a straight face.

  “It was great to watch Benitez fight,” said boxing personality Bert Sugar. “He could duck so much that all you could get was an ear. Later he lost his timing and they hit him and he got brain damage. But he was brilliant. I remember sitting at ringside of that fight in Vegas and I was heard audibly and it was quoted in the papers by the Brits. I gave Duran the fifth round and he asked me why and I said, ‘I have to give him something.’” Jose Torres thought that Benitez had not even had to extend himself to win, and saw “qualities Wilfred displayed in this match that only a conscious quest for perfection could produce … His control was absolute.” Steve Farhood of KO magazine wrote that when Benitez was motivated he was “the sweetest, slickest, smartest, most natural, the best boxer in the ‘sweet science.’” It was this Benitez who Duran faced in Las Vegas. Yet, it was also his last hurrah, as he, a current shell of himself, currently lives with his mother in Carolina, suffering dearly from the aftereffects of the brutal sport.

  Quizzed again about retirement, Duran said he would do what his manager told him to do. Eleta responded, “The time has come. I think I will retire him.” If he wanted to do things his way it would be without Eleta calling the shots. In fact, a chasm began to open between the two men, especially when Duran learned through the media that Eleta intended to renounce his managerial services.

  Eight months later, Duran would be back in the ring and Eleta would be back to his horses. “I liked the horses better because they didn’t talk back,” said the manager.

  DURAN AGAIN ballooned, to almost thirteen stone, but he resumed his career, intending to box on at light-middleweight. “The American press is always saying I’m fat,” he said, “but I see Tony Ayala fight and he looks fat but no one says anything.” Ayala was a stocky but rip-roaring junior middleweight who was tearing through the division. Unfortunately he found himself in and out of trouble with the law. “Just keep me out of jail long enough to knock out Duran,” he said.

  Duran found himself in the middle of a
power struggle between the two most important promoters in boxing. Don King and Bob Arum hated each other with a passion. King had held exclusive rights to Duran during his prime years, though he and Arum had grudgingly buried their differences to co-promote Duran in the past. With Eleta now seemingly uninterested in his charge, Duran agreed to box for Arum in a title challenge to WBA light-middleweight champion Davey Moore. King, however, declared Duran was already bound by a three-bout agreement leading to a prime-time TV mega-bout with the unbeaten Ayala that November. With a view to building up the Ayala bout, King found Duran what he assumed would be a relatively easy tune-up against England’s Kirkland Laing. Arum hit back, claiming that Duran was only under contract with King for the Laing fight. He declared that the row was merely a pretext by King to grab a piece of his Duran-Moore title promotion in November. “Duran Just a Pawn in the Arum-King Chess Match,” declared the Miami Herald.

  King won out. Duran admitted that he had made a hasty decision, sheepishly apologized to King, returned a $25,000 payment from Arum and planned to meet Ayala after he beat Laing – which all parties assumed was a foregone conclusion. On September 4, however, a 155-pound Duran, now trained by Bill Prezant and handled by Luis Henriquez, traveled to the Cobo Arena in Detroit and subjected himself to utter humiliation, fighting and acting like a journeyman. The Jamaican-born Laing meant nothing in America but was known in the UK as an unpredictable maverick who could outbox most welterweights when his mind was on the job. He started hesitantly but grew in confidence as he found Duran easy to hit, and jolted the former champion several times. In contrast, Duran’s punches carried little kick. The beer-bloated Panamanian lost a split, ten-round decision, two judges voting for Laing and one for Duran. “You a very smart sonofabitch,” he told Laing afterwards in his broken English. It was the fourth loss of his career and the first to a fighter regarded as less than top-notch. Ring magazine’s 1982 Upset of the Year left Duran in career limbo.

  “Eleta turned his back on me and that hurt me. After that fight with Benitez, he wasn’t interested in me at all,” said Duran. “They all thought I was burned out. Eleta leaves me with Don King and King gets this fight for me.” Duran had trained for Laing in Easton, Pennsylvania, the hometown of heavyweight champion Larry Holmes. “Holmes takes me to his bar, and I used to go every night there and I never trained. I tried but I couldn’t make the weight and some deadbeat beats me. I go to the hotel with Plomo and I start laughing. ‘This deadbeat beats me,’ I say. Plomo tells me that my career is finished and what I needed to do was quit screwing around and get back on track.

  “I didn’t take care of myself. I was so fool-crazy with women that Eleta called me into his office and said, ‘Cholo, Cholo, come here.’ And I’d go and Eleta would ask if I wanted a fight with whoever and say, ‘Do you want to take it or not?’ I’d ask how long before the fight. ‘Three weeks,’ he would say and I told him to give it to me. Give me ten thousand dollars ahead and I would take the fight. I would take the money and I would go drink with a bunch of whores. I would feel like the King of the Bars.”

  Despite the language barrier, Holmes and Duran were friends. “I knew Roberto Duran before he started to train in Easton,” said Holmes. “I trained at Bobby Gleason’s Gym in New York. Roberto Duran was all they talked about. My trainer Ernie Butler took me to meet him and we’ve always been friends.

  “When he was at my place in Easton, I told him, ‘You got to get ready for a fight.’ But he said, ‘I ready. I ready. I fight. I beat him. I knock him out.’ He was drinking 150-proof out of my bar and I was hollering at him. He didn’t want to hear that. He did what he wanted. I cannot tell a multi-millionaire that is champion of the world what to do.

  “I got into an argument with some of his crew … because all they wanted was the money. There’s more to boxing than, ‘Give me the money.’ It’s about the guy’s health and well-being and make sure he’s not doing the wrong things. It’s so easy to get caught up into that. I know. What can you say? I wasn’t with him all day and all night long. He had a following, women from all over. They’d come to Easton where he was training. There was like 16,000 people in the city. When Duran came, there was like 40,000. Nobody had control over Duran.”

  Duran had used up his boxing lifelines. Don King, never a man to stick with a loser, berated him in the locker room after the fight for not trying and for having too many people around him. Not only had Duran embarrassed himself, he had also ruined the possibility of a lucrative bout with Tony Ayala. The scolding prompted Duran to tell a Miami Herald reporter, “I won’t fight any more for Don King. Never again. Even if he begs me.”

  Abandoned by Arcel and Brown, deserted by Eleta and now shunned by King, Duran cut a forlorn figure as he trekked to Bob Arum’s New York office in search of a payday. If Arum rejected him, it really would be over. He would retire with a whimper, his genius forever overshadowed by the ignominy of his decline. “He wasn’t worth a plugged quarter,” said Arum.

  The Harvard-educated lawyer was distinctly unimpressed but someone whose judgment he respected spoke up for Duran. Teddy Brenner, for years the matchmaker at Madison Square Garden, had booked Duran for his first ever US bout. In 1980, Brenner had joined Top Rank, Inc. Now he told Arum, “There’s nothing wrong with this guy, physically. He’s never taken a beating. Whether or not he wants to fight again is a question mark.” Brenner later told The Ring, “King chased him. Duran was waiting for one kind word. He came to us, we sat him down. We gave him a chance. If we hadn’t, it might have been the end for him.” Arum admitted, “I don’t know about boxing, but I’ve got a man who knows as much about fighters as anybody, and Teddy said there was nothing wrong with Duran that being in good physical and mental condition wouldn’t solve. Teddy said that if you get him mentally right, he’d probably beat anybody around.”

  To see what he had left, Arum and Brenner found Duran a match with another former British champion, Jimmy Batten, who had moved Stateside to further his career. The bout was negotiated on Duran’s behalf, not by Carlos Eleta, but by his former matchmaker Luis Spada, an old and loyal friend. It marked the final rift between one of the great partnerships in boxing.

  In the bad times after Montreal, when crowds threw stones at Duran’s house and ripped down his mural on Avenida Balboa, Luis Spada had gone to see him and said, “Anytime you need me, even to carry the spit bucket in your corner, you could call me.” Duran had not forgotten. Quiet and reserved, yet respected for his boxing acumen, Spada would be content to stay in the background.

  He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and caught the boxing bug and fed an early boxing fix when he visited boxing gyms while stationed in New York as a member of the Argentine Navy during his twenties. In the early Seventies, he built a reputation in boxing in Los Angeles. In 1971, he was invited to dinner with “some boxing people” from Panama. They turned out to be Carlos Eleta and his lawyer, Jorge Ruben Rosas. Eleta talked about his desire for a world champ and Spada said he could get a title fight with Nicolino “The Untouchable” Locche for Eleta’s fighter Peppermint Frazer. “He was very enthusiastic,” recalled Spada. “He told me to make the fight with Locche through his manager Tito Lectoure. Eleta invited me to Panama and we dicussed the terms of the fight. I went to Argentina, and closed the deal with Lectoure for March 1972.”

  Frazer won, and Eleta talked Spada into working as his matchmaker and boxing advisor while making Panama his permanent home. He became a fixture in Duran’s entourage and went with him around the world. Spada broke off with Eleta in 1975, and started his own promotional company in Panama City. He developd his own stable of world champions, including Panamanians Rigoberto Riasco and Hilario Zapata and Nicaraguan Eddie Gazo.

  In September 1982, in the depths of his doldrums, Duran called Spada and asked him to handle him for the Batten fight. “I tell Spada, ‘I don’t want you to carry my bucket for me; I want you to be my manager,’” recalled Duran. “After that, Spada goes back to Eleta and tells him tha
t I asked him to be my manager. He asks Eleta if he still has some formal contract with him. Spada tells Eleta, ‘I’m going to help Duran.’ Eleta says, ‘Keep him, keep him.’ I’m in the gym; the Rock is back.”

  Spada recalled the episode: “I always had a good appreciation for Roberto. He called me one day and asked me to be his manager and I said that I would be over at five p.m. the next day because I needed to talk to Mr Eleta first to be sure that Duran didn’t have any commitments with Eleta. I didn’t want to take a fighter from anybody. Before I got him, Duran was losing to guys like Laing in Michigan. Laing used to be a sparring partner for Duran. Eleta said that he no longer worked with Duran. He wished me luck and that afternoon I went to Duran’s house.”

  Spada asked for only one-tenth of Duran’s purse money rather than the normal one-third. “So I tell Eleta I go my way, you go your way,” Duran recalled. “Then I start training again. I still feel good. Spada comes into play. I fired Eleta. I tell those guys, now I’m going to become champion again. I started to prepare myself.”

  Any improvement in form, however, was not immediately apparent. The Batten fight was on the same bill as the Alexis Arguello–Aaron Pryor headliner at the Orange Bowl, Miami, on November 12. Duran had specifically requested that his bout be the final one of the evening, in the so-called “walk-off” slot when most people were on their way home, so that few people would be around to see him. Considering his showing, it might have been better if he’d waited till the arena had cleared. Arguello-Pryor was a classic, Duran-Batten a stinker. “At 157 pounds, Duran waddled his way toward a fearful Batten and scored with one harmless punch at a time,” according to reporter Steve Farhood. “Even though the Pryor-Arguello press conference was over by the sixth round, few writers had returned to their seats to witness the once-great Duran. With strangers in his corner and loose skin hanging obscenely over his muscles, this was a different fighter, a finished fighter.” The crowd booed as the scores were tallied and Duran took the unanimous decision and $25,000.