In what really was his last chance, Top Rank plunged Duran into a Latin showdown with the fearsome Pipino Cuevas.
IF EVER A fighter wasn’t going to back up against Duran, it was the man they called “The Assassin.” Pipino Cuevas was the embodiment of encender, a Spanish word meaning to strike a match or to incinerate. In Mexican boxing, it denoted an explosive combination of power, charisma and volatility. “He makes Rocky Marciano look like a sissy,” said Ernie Fuentes, a San Diego promoter. His dark, brooding eyes and impassive face added to an aura of imminent danger. “Most fighters don’t even have a face like this,” wrote New York Times reporter Dave Anderson about Cuevas.
He was born Isidro Pipino Cuevas Gonzalez, one of five boys and six girls to a small-time butcher in Hidalgo, Mexico. Young Pipino was a loner and often picked fights in school. His despairing father, Geraldo, took him to a boxing gym at thirteen and he became hooked. Trained by Lupe Sanchez, Cuevas would turn pro at fourteen after just nineteen amateur bouts. He was stopped in two rounds in his debut, and lost another four of his first twelve bouts, but when he hit people they stayed hit, and his wins almost always came inside the distance. Cuevas punched his way up the rankings and won the WBA welterweight title at just eighteen when he knocked down champion Angel Espada three times in the second round the summer of 1976.
“That night in Mexico where I won the title was a beautiful thing,” said Cuevas. “It was a dream come true for me. I had three fights with Espada. The second fight was the toughest of my career. I had three jaw fractures, two fractured ribs and three or four cuts on my face.”
As champion, Cuevas came into his own. He flattened or stopped ten out of eleven challengers and was talked about as potentially one of the division’s all-time greats. Pipino had learned the puncher’s secret of punching not at the target but through it and he didn’t just beat his challengers, he beat them up. Shoji Tsujimoto was still unconscious twenty seconds after being counted out. Billy Backus suffered an orbital fracture of the eye socket and had headaches and double vision weeks after their fight. Harold Weston’s jaw was dislocated. Angel Espada’s jaw was broken. Even a fighter who outpointed him, Andy Price, remarked with awe, “Cuevas could knock down walls with his punching.”
“Pipino has always been different,” said Chargin. “He has never been real flamboyant. He was always that you-win-some-and-lose-some type of guy. When I see him he is still that same down-to-earth type of guy.”
Cuevas became a huge hit among the Mexicans of the West Coast of the USA. They loved him for his fuerza and crowds filled the Olympic Auditorium to glimpse his vaunted left hook. “He drew such tremendous gates,” remembered promoter Don Chargin. “He was so hot. Nobody was drawing like that during that time. There was a huge population of Mexicans in Los Angeles, and he was such an idol with Mexicans. That left hook was it. When he would hit guys with that he would really stretch them.”
The welterweight division was not for the meek and the test of a fighter’s greatness was how he fared against the other greats then storming the division. Cuevas was lined up for what would have been easily the biggest purse of his career, a so-called superfight with Ray Leonard, but backstage machinations saw him edged out in favor of the better-connected Duran. Instead, he faced the fast-rising Tommy Hearns. Styles make fights, and for all his frightening power, the short-armed Cuevas was made for the rangy Detroit Hit Man, especially in the challenger’s hometown. In September 1980, Hearns burst Cuevas’s bubble when he took him out in sensational fashion in two rounds at the Joe Louis Arena. The Mexican assassin seemed psyched out by his laser-eyed opponent and Hearns would later say that the punch he hit Cuevas with was the hardest he’d ever thrown.
By the time he met Duran in 1983, Cuevas was also coming off a decision loss to Roger Stafford in Ring magazine’s Upset of the Year. Like Stone Hands, he was desperate to resurrect a flagging career. Though he was still only twenty-five, this would be his last shot. His skills had diminished, but his punch remained and no one was betting that it would go the distance. “Cuevas would fight Duran the same way he fights everybody else,” his adviser Rafael Mendoza told The Ring when the match-up was still speculative. “He’d make Duran back up. And if Duran didn’t back up, Cuevas would run him over. Duran could never beat Cuevas. Not on his best night, he couldn’t.”
In fact there were rumors on both sides that neither fighter wanted to get in the ring and that Cuevas wanted too much money. Also, there were rumblings that Cuevas only wanted to fight in Mexico City, with a guaranteed title shot for the winner. Cuevas responded with a telegram that was published in Ring magazine.
I have never ducked a challenge from Duran. Will sign any time to fight him. Will even fly to New York. To sign right in the offices of RING Magazine. Don’t care when or where we fight. The money is not that important. Let’s just fight.
Signed, Pipino Cuevas
Having worked in Duran’s corner for ten years, Ray Arcel had such reservations about his former fighter getting in the ring with Pipino Cuevas that he wrote a letter that was published in the New York Times on 15 January 1983.
Dear Roberto,
Life is like a book. There is a beginning, there is a middle, and there has to be an end to the story. And so must a career come to an end. I hope that you will see fit to end your career.
Ray Arcel
After consulting with Duran about Cuevas, Luis Spada closed the deal with Bob Arum for January 29, 1983, in the Sports Arena in Los Angeles. Duran had fought in LA twice before on cards promoted by Don Chargin and had his own following there. He promised discipline in his training regimen. “After the loss to Leonard, I was starting to drink, fooling around, going to nightclubs, and was in very bad shape,” Duran told a reporter in 1983. “Then one day I say, ‘I have to do something if I am going to continue boxing.’ I start to change when I fought Pipino Cuevas.”
Duran’s wife, Felicidad, saw his enthusiasm return when they told him he was going to fight Cuevas. “From that point on, I began to see the same Roberto as before – happy, joyful, the one that liked to joke around. I recovered him. He was back. He was the same Roberto I once knew.”
“I told him that if he wants to come back, he’d have to work very hard because I didn’t want to waste my time and his time,” said Luis Spada. “He promised to work hard, not to worry that he would do whatever I say. And when Roberto was training, he would work very, very hard. Of course when he was on vacation, he liked to eat a lot. But coming to train, he was very dedicated with me.”
Tension was tangible at the Sports Arena as the two black-haired, heavy-handed hitters faced off for a punch-out that would see one of them face career oblivion. Duran, who was actually the heavier man at 152 and looked stocky but strong, circled to his left, away from Cuevas’s left hook, and jabbed, then landed the first telling blow with a right to the jaw. Utilizing his six-inch reach advantage, the rail-thin Cuevas, 149, went after Duran and landed three of his signature wide shots to the body, and later rammed home a shot to Duran’s chin. The Mexican looked sharp and accurate. Just to secure his territory, Cuevas sent a left hook Duran’s way after the bell sounded.
Then came a key adjustment. “One thing that happened before that fight was very important,” said Luis Spada. “Duran was the only boxer to ever tell me, ‘Viejo, if you see that I am doing something wrong, please let me know and I will change it.’ In the first round with Cuevas, Roberto was ahead, but was in front of Cuevas, who was a good puncher. I told him that he needed to box. If not, maybe Cuevas will hit him with one of those big punches. He said, ‘Okay, Viejo.’ In the second round, Roberto started boxing.”
Duran came out for round two with fierce intensity and stuck a pole-like jab in the face of the Mexican. This wasn’t the lethargic and tense Duran of the first round, he was sharp, menacing and focused, looking to break down Cuevas. Duran went toe-to-toe with the Mexican, looking for the left hook to the body. Both gave and took big shots, but Duran was quicker, a
nd working harder.
In the third round, the upright Cuevas began to let the big bombs go. He wasn’t the most accurate of hitters – Carlos Palomino once said Cuevas missed opponents even when they stood still – but he nailed Duran with three uppercuts on the inside. A left hook from Cuevas further stirred the Mexican contingent as it landed flush on Duran’s chin. But Duran, unfazed, fired back with two clean hooks and mocked his opponent, pointing to his chin. Duran set up Cuevas with a right to his neck, and then a left hook that momentarily jerked Cuevas’s head and body completely around. Although Cuevas answered back with his uppercuts, Duran’s punches were clearly draining him. Cuevas kept punching; it was all he knew. There was no strategy; he threw bombs in desperation. If Duran decided to move his head in front of one of them, so be it. Pipino landed a left hook that would have felled lesser men; Duran just stood there swinging. Duran was quickly back in his corner at the end of the round, anxious to get back out there to end the fight.
Duran was now hot in pursuit. He circled to his left at the outset of the fourth round, jabbing and moving as Spada had asked. A straight right from Duran sent Cuevas down for the first time and brought a standing eight-count from referee James Jen Kin. A moment later, Duran lodged Cuevas against the ropes for another fusillade. Cuevas backpedaled out of danger, but couldn’t shake his pursuer. A right jolted back his head.
Latin pride was at stake and as stoic and brave as Cuevas was, in his prime he couldn’t have prevented the incoming onslaught in the fourth round. He barely moved as Duran nailed him with a right hand in the middle of the ring, and then began to backup as if survival was the only thing on his mind. He had nowhere to go. An exhausted Pipino sat on the ropes, threw desperate rebuttals, and then suffered a right cross that had him looking directly at the canvas; a follow-up left hook had him reeling. Duran connected with another right forcing Cuevas to grasp Duran for safety, but was quickly rebuffed with three uppercuts. He would not surrender. A disjointed and weary Cuevas flew against the ropes like a pinball and squatted as the referee jumped in to start the eight-count. Cuevas looked to his corner for help; he was the portrait of a beaten fighter.
Both of Cuevas’s eyes were blackened, and his mouth was wide open in anticipation as he prepared for the inevitable ending. He could no longer turn to his power for backup. With over a minute remaining, Duran cornered Cuevas and landed almost a dozen uppercuts and hooks that bounced the Mexican into the ringpost. Cuevas hung on and refused to let go of Duran until Kin broke them apart. It was his only respite, as Duran moved him against the ropes for another ambush. He banged a right hook to the body and then to the head. Another uppercut had Cuevas wobbling to the other side of the ring. No longer was he throwing punches. A straight right jolted the head of Cuevas, forcing many in the crowd to wonder, how much more can he take?
It was a sad sight as Cuevas couldn’t defend himself anymore. Duran wailed away with five punches, the left hook to the ribs did the most damage as Cuevas slumped to his knees and grasped the ropes. He had risen by nine, and signaled with his glove for manager Lupe Sanchez to stay put, but it was too late. As Cuevas began to walk toward Duran to continue, Sanchez had already thrown in the towel. The fight was stopped at 2:24 of the round; the twenty-five-year-old had aged ten years in as many minutes.
Having never mastered the classic bob-and-weave, Cuevas tended to move toward punches, not away from them. He would lose six more bouts to inferior opposition before leaving the game in 1989. “I am a good friend of the Duran family and I think of him as a brother,” said Cuevas. “I remember the punch Duran hit me with. It was a bad fight for me.”
Duran looked ahead. As for the letter from Arcel, he had responded with his fists in a manner his words couldn’t express:
Dear Ray
I appreciate your concern, but I’m not done just yet. I have only begun.
Regards, Cholo.
16
Return of the King
It was a slow, deliberate pounding. And Davey Moore, because of his youth and because of his heart, took a lot more punishment than he should have. It was a massacre. You had a sense watching it, that this was it for Davey Moore, and sure enough it was.
Steve Farhood
IN THREE YEARS, Roberto Duran had traveled the gamut from hero to hopeless, beloved to despised. The crushing of Pipino Cuevas had restored at least some of his lustre. Duran had made a promise at Torrijos’s graveside to bring home one more world championship in his honor. Whether his next move would fulfill that vow or send Duran closer to his retirement speech was up to an undefeated junior middleweight from New York’s toughest neighborhood.
It could have been billed as the Vet vs. the Rookie. Davey Moore was a young stud from the Bronx, a WBC junior middleweight champion of limited experience but great potential. Muscles sprouted on his frame; his was the kind of body that despised fat. He had challenged unbeaten world champion Tadashi Mihara with a number ten ranking and only eight pro fights to his name but had won in six rounds and many fight insiders had him on the trail to greatness. Moore had watched the Cuevas fight on TV from an Atlantic City hotel where he’d been celebrating victory of his own over challenger Gary Guiden. He had been impressed but not overawed.
The fight was scheduled for Duran’s thirty-second birthday, June 16, 1983, and was originally supposed to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, but promoter Bob Arum moved it to Madison Square Garden when undercard fighter Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini was injured. “We decided to train in Buenos Aires because we had a direct flight to Johannesburg,” said Luis Spada. “On the same show, Mancini was going to fight, but he got a broken hand. I got a call and Arum had to change the spot of the fight. Then I heard it was Madison Square Garden. Roberto was happy because that’s where he wanted to fight. He said, ‘Okay, let’s stop in Panama first.’ It was natural for Roberto because he always wanted to see his family and his children. But I knew better and told him that we would go straight to the training camp in New Jersey.”
Something early on told Duran that this wasn’t going to be as difficult as everyone thought. “Many people felt I had nothing left to give,” said Duran. “People always think in what they see but people don’t think in what I have in here [his heart]. When I saw Davey Moore fight, I said, ‘This isn’t shit. I’m going to make him eat that shit.’”
Duran set up training camp at Great Gorge in McAfee, New Jersey, and then moved to Gleason’s Gym. A couple days before the bout, Duran found his opponent preparing for morning roadwork in New York and leapt at the chance to intimidate him. “One day I’m finishing running at the park and Moore was about to start running,” said Duran. “I keep staring at him. He tried to impress me with his body. I laugh in his face. I tell Plomo after this guy passed by that I’m going to beat the shit out of him. He looks back and I look back at him and laugh at him. I tell Plomo I’m going to rip him apart.”
With the weigh-in at 11 a.m. on the day of the fight, Spada checked Duran’s weight at 8 a.m and he was easily under the 154-pound limit. However, Moore wasn’t in the same shape. “The day of the weigh-in this guy couldn’t make weight,” said Duran. “I told everyone, you go send out for my dinner and what not, but I’m not moving until he makes weight. I stood there and he’s watching me eat in front of him.”
Spada recalled the scene: “The people of Davey Moore made a big mistake because they believed that Duran was too old and Moore was a good, young champion. Moore came in overweight at 156 pounds and Roberto made 152. After making weight Roberto went to eat, he loves that. Moore had two hours to make weight. I stayed with them until they made the weight.”
The weigh-in also gave the first inkling of the extraordinary support Duran would call on that night. “It was the most amazing thing in the world,” said boxing editor Bert Sugar. “I’m at the weigh-in and they have flags. If you placed a call to Panama that night, no one would have answered: They were all in NY.” Even Carlos Eleta would show up. “We went in the dressing room,” s
aid Duran. “A godfather of mine comes in and tells me he has a message from Eleta. ‘What does he want?’ I ask. ‘He wants to come to the fight and be in your corner.’ I tell him that I don’t want him to come to the fight or be in my corner or anything.”
It seemed like an odd time for Eleta to try to get back into Duran’s life. “My godfather Tito Iglesias said, ‘We respect him but we don’t want him here.’ Spada started crying and I ask him what’s wrong,” said Duran. “I tell him I don’t want Eleta here and a bunch of things. I get my godfather and I tell him that I don’t even want to see Eleta here in a can of paint. Tell him to look through the TV and I’m going to be champ. And when I go back to Panama, I tell him not even to say hello to me. I told him that that night I would become a champion again. And I did.” Eleta disputes that such a conversation ever occurred.
No matter how physically gifted and perfectly sculpted, Davey Moore was a youth compared to Duran. The Arum-promoted fighter turned twenty-four just a week before the bout. He had started boxing not long after leaving high school and as an amateur won four Golden Gloves titles and compiled a record of 96-6-4. He had won the world title in only his ninth bout and had defended it three times.
Hands of Stone Page 29
