Four Kings

by George Kimball

  The result was that the weigh-in, I noted in my dispatch to the Boston Herald American, “was witnessed by more pickpockets than reporters.”

  Leonard weighed in without incident, at 146.

  Duran peeled off his black motorcycle jacket, T-shirt, and Levis, and also made the welterweight limit with a pound to spare. He then immediately drained the contents of a thermos of beef broth provided by a waiting attendant and attacked two large oranges before heading back to the Hyatt to eat some more.

  “He’s dehydrated,” whispered Angelo Dundee.

  Janks Morton had been assigned as the representative of Leonard’s team to monitor the enemy’s trip to the scale. On his way out of the room, Duran glared menacingly at Morton, slammed his fist into his palm, and gave him the finger.

  By the time we got back up the escalator to the atrium, Duran was making a spectacle of himself in the coffee shop with his customary display of table manners. Having made weight just a few minutes earlier, he was already seated at a table, and, having speared a thick sirloin steak with a fork, he held the slab of meat suspended before him as he leaned forward to rip off huge chunks, which he devoured like a ravenous animal.

  At the afternoon rules meeting, Dundee protested Duran’s chin whiskers and asked that he be ordered to shave.

  “That beard nauseates me,” said Dundee. “It isn’t good for the clean image of boxing. Besides, beards are unsanitary.”

  The common assumption was that Dundee had raised the issue as a psychological ploy, hoping to get under Duran’s skin. Jose Sulaiman cited the WBC rule on the subject, which specified that “a beard on a fighter will only be accepted if its thickness is not considered a cushion, or that it could cause a cut or a hurt over a cut over [sic] his rival.”

  Sulaiman explained that Duran’s beard would be okayed provided it were “reasonably trimmed.”

  What was “reasonable,” we asked.

  “Oh, a half-inch, maybe, as long as it’s not a cushion.”

  With that he reached out and tugged on my beard.

  “Yours, for example, would probably be all right.”

  “Watch out,” I told him, jumping back. “Beards are unsanitary, remember? ”

  At the rules meeting Carlos Eleta asked, “Is it a foul if you hold the other guy behind the neck and pull him toward you while you hit him? ”

  The question was greeted with some amusement, since the tactic was one not unfamiliar to Duran.

  Octavio Meyran of Mexico was named the referee, Mike Jacobs, James Brimmel, and Jean Deswerts the ringside judges. Neither side voiced any objection to the officials.

  Before the parties were dismissed, the WBC reaffirmed its policy prohibiting “profane or abusive language,” although, we noted at the time, they didn’t specify in which language.

  Afterward, reporters flocked around the chief seconds.

  “Duran is a real cutie, but he has his own rhythm he likes to fight to,” said Dundee, who predicted the Leonard we would see the next night would be a dramatic departure from the one who had fought Duran in its predecessor. “If you want to beat Roberto Duran, he’s the type of guy who will get frustrated if he can’t do what he wants to do.”

  “It’s been six months, and only one thing has changed,” said Arcel. “Now Leonard will walk into the ring knowing he can’t win.”

  Only one of them would be right.

  The Superdome had been scaled from $1,000 to $20, and with the prime seats spread across what would normally be the football field, the organizers had developed a unique configuration to improve the sight lines. The ring had been raised, with a second set of ring posts piggy-backed atop one another and securely bolted together.

  The rows of the media section surrounding the ring were stepped down, and the ringside photographers were assigned to shoot from a “well” beneath the ring, thus ensuring the best possible view for the patrons with floor-level tickets.

  “It seemed like a great idea at the time,” recalled Bobby Goodman.

  Goodman had arranged to beef up the Superdome security force by contacting the athletic departments at several local universities and hiring a number of students from Tulane and Loyola, who were given a crash course in pickpocket-spotting and issued matching T-shirts. The college boys were happy enough with the chance to earn a small paycheck and watch the fight for free.

  Roger Leonard once again fought on the undercard, as did the brother of another world champion, Larry Holmes. Roger outpointed Melvin Dennis over ten rounds, while Mark Holmes knocked out a local middleweight, Bruce Calloway, in five. Two New Orleans boxers who would later challenge for world titles also boxed in that night’s prelims: Jerry Celestine dispatched Pablo Ramos in the ninth round of their light-heavyweight fight, and lightweight Melvin Paul knocked out Chubby Johnson in four.

  In the co-feature, Marvin Camel, an Eddie Futch–trained Native American from Montana, became the first man in boxing history to lose a cruiserweight title. Camel, who earlier in the year had won the newly minted championship on his second try (his first bout, against Mate Parlov, in Yugoslavia, had ended in a draw), lost a majority decision to Carlos De Leon.

  The crowd eventually reached 20,000, a figure that might have been impressive in another venue. The NBA Jazz had routinely drawn larger audiences to the Superdome during the Pete Maravich era, but had nonetheless been forced to move out of town because they were losing money. When Hyatt executives stood on the floor and looked around the stadium, they saw 60,000 empty seats.

  A buzz filled the stadium as the combatants made their entrances. In Montreal, both Leonard and Duran had worn white trunks. This time Leonard came out in what Fast Eddie Schuyler’s AP dispatch described as “villain black”−black trunks and a tattered pair of black low-cuts, whose gold laces matched the stripes on his trunks.

  Duran and his substantial entourage were decked out in matching white tracksuits, and as the procession made its way to the ring they looked like they were on their way to a Moonie wedding. An alarming number of them made it into the ring with the champion, and they gleefully waved Panamanian flags as that nation’s anthem was played.

  Nobody thought of it at the time, but all that excess weight in the ring undoubtedly put an extra strain on the jury-rigged ring supports, and probably contributed to the engineering disaster that nearly brought the fight to a halt a few minutes later.

  Duran and King might have dictated most of the terms of the rematch, but Leonard retained one psychological ploy. In lieu of the U.S. anthem, the bout was preceded by Ray Charles, the man after whom Leonard had been named, singing “America the Beautiful.” It was a moving rendition, and an approving Ray Charles Leonard, a confident smile on his face, danced an accompanying shuffle in the corner.

  Although Bobby Goodman’s loyalties were with Duran, he recalled, “We got goose bumps” at that moment.

  “You could hear a pin drop in the ’Dome,” said Goodman. “All you could hear was Ray and the music. I’d never put it together that Ray Leonard was named Ray Charles Leonard, but it was like he was singing the song just for Leonard, and it must have added a lot of inspiration.”

  It did, said Leonard.

  “This was Ray Charles, my hero, my namesake,” recalled Leonard. “When he walked toward me he said ‘I love you, brother.’ And then when he sang? Forget about it! While Ray was singing I looked over at Duran and it was like he was thinking ‘What the fuck is this? ’”

  Leonard was determined to correct his strategic failings in Montreal, and did so in spectacular fashion. Refusing to be drawn into another street battle, he used his speed and superior boxing gifts to frustrate Duran.

  “You could see it right from the opening bell,” recalled Bobby Goodman. “Duran came out in aggressive mode, but Leonard was dancing, flicking with his jab, moving around in circles as he changed direction. Duran had expected to be meeting the Leonard he faced in Montreal, but it was as if he’d been replaced by a different boxer. You could almost watch the fr
ustration spread across Roberto’s face.”

  Midway through the opening stanza, Duran lowered his head and bull-rushed Leonard into the ropes. It was a move reminiscent of their first fight, but this time Ray spun around in a graceful pirouette and landed a right hand as he danced away. Near the end of the round Leonard stopped circling long enough to land a solid left-right combination.

  At one point in the second round Leonard dazzled Duran with three straight rights, one of which snapped the Panamanian’s head back. When Duran charged, Leonard quickly tied him up, and, as if to remove all doubt from the judges’ minds, finished up by landing two stiff jabs at the end of the round.

  Midway through the second round, the middle of the ring abruptly collapsed as if it had developed a sinkhole. The spectators were oblivious to this development, and few of us in the press row noticed it right away.

  Bobby Goodman raced from his seat and crawled under the ring. The bolts holding the center support of the jury-rigged structure had snapped under the tension. The ring was sagging in the middle.

  “I’ve often thought later that this could have given Duran an out,” said Goodman. “He could have avoided the embarrassing outcome if he’d said he’d twisted his ankle when the ring dropped−or he could have said it was too dangerous and refused to continue. But Duran was too much of a macho guy for that. He just wanted Leonard to be a man and fight.”

  Between rounds, Goodman hastily summoned a platoon of the football players he had recruited as security guards. The college boys managed to reposition the center column, and then were ordered to remain there, with the weight of the promotion literally on their shoulders, for the remainder of the fight.

  “There must have been ten or twelve of them standing underneath the ring, holding it up,” recalled Goodman. “They did a great job.”

  Duran was still trying to play the bully in the third round, and did a better job of it, winning the round on all three scorecards. He pushed Leonard around a bit, landed a few blows to the body, and at one point swatted Leonard with a punch to the face. Ray responded by sticking out his tongue.

  Manos de Piedra continued his body attack in the fourth. As he pushed Leonard into the ropes, Duran fell down.

  A round later, it was Leonard’s turn to hit the deck, falling as he backed into a corner trying to fend off Duran’s body attack. Both trips to the canvas were ruled slips by Meyran, and when Leonard got up from his pratfall he tagged Duran with a left-right combination. Duran landed two glancing body shots and a right to the head just before the bell to solidify his claim on the round, which he won on two scorecards.

  In their first fight Duran had mocked Leonard. Now it was Sugar Ray’s turn.

  “Round after round you could see the frustration building in Duran,” said Goodman. “This was a fight that neither he nor his brain trust had ever imagined. Leonard’s strategy was brilliant, but it was like he was making fun of Duran. Duran felt disrespected by his tactics.”

  In the seventh round Leonard dropped his hands and pointed at his chin. A seething Duran fired with his right, but Leonard pulled his head back and allowed the punch to sail harmlessly past.

  Then he stopped in mid-ring and wound up his right arm in windmill fashion, as if he were going to deliver a bolo punch. Instead he punched his seemingly mesmerized opponent in the snout with a jab stiff enough to make Duran’s eyes water.

  The late Pete Axthelm, covering the fight for Newsweek, was seated next to me. We turned to one another, shaking our heads over the act of provocation.

  “He might as well have pulled the tail of Duran’s lion,” I said, and Axthelm smiled in agreement.

  “Doesn’t he know,” he said, “that this is Roberto Duran? ”

  Our thinking was that taunting Duran seemed particularly unwise, because if you really pissed him off, he just might kill you.

  In retrospect, though, “it may have been the most painful blow of Duran’s life,” wrote Sports Illustrated ’s Bill Nack. “It drew hooting laugher from the crowd and made Duran a public spectacle−a laughingstock.”

  “Leonard could not have shamed Duran more thoroughly if he had reached over and pulled down his trunks,” wrote Ray Didinger.

  Calling the fight from his ringside position, Howard Cosell exclaimed, “Duran is completely bewildered!”

  Leonard kept mugging at Duran, skipping his feet as he went into an Ali shuffle, as he shouted at his foe. Duran was seething as he returned to his corner.

  Leonard was clearly winning the psychological battle, but on the official scorecards it was still a fairly close fight after seven rounds. Brimmel had Leonard ahead by a single point, Jacobs and Deswerts by two.

  The judges’ opinions would become moot a few moments later.

  The start of the eighth was momentarily delayed when Meyran sent Duran back to his corner and ordered Brown to remove what the referee had deemed an excessive coat of Vaseline from his face, but when action resumed, the fight had taken yet another turn: In the seventh Leonard had taunted and teased Duran, but in the eighth he was inflicting actual damage as well.

  As Ray danced from side to side, keeping his opponent at bay with a graceful jab, an enraged Duran lowered his head and charged the matador. Leonard stepped back and countered with a hard right to the face.

  A chastened Duran withdrew to ponder his fate, once again allowing Leonard to keep him at the end of his jab. As Leonard pressed forward, Duran backed toward the ropes, where he absorbed a three-punch combination delivered with lightning speed.

  Late in the round, as Leonard once again herded him toward the ropes, Duran abruptly threw up his arms, muttered something to the referee, and began to walk away.

  From our ringside positions it was impossible to hear what he had said. It would be left to Meyran to explain to the press that Duran had told him, “No mas. No mas box!”

  Even though the statement had been uttered in his own language, the Mexican referee did not immediately comprehend that Duran was trying to quit and tried to wave him back into action. Leonard did not seem to grasp it either. He chased Duran across the ring and landed two punches to the midsection. There was no response from Duran, other than to wave dismissively as if to say, “I’m not going to do this anymore.”

  “He quit! He quit! He quit!” Leonard heard his brother shout from the corner.

  It took even longer for the crowd and ringside reporters to figure out the perplexing turn of events, but when Leonard went cartwheeling across the ring and began to climb the ring ropes in celebration it was clear that the fight was over.

  “But if you look at the tape, as Duran was walking away toward his corner he turned and suddenly put his fists up again,” said Leonard.

  No, Duran hadn’t reconsidered his retirement from the fight.

  “Roger had come running out of the corner, and after what happened in Montreal, Duran thought he was coming after him. ”

  “There was a look of disgust and frustration on Duran’s face when he said, ‘No mas,’ ” recalled Bobby Goodman. “Everyone was stunned, including me. The great Duran, quitting in the middle of a world title defense? No way, I thought, but it was true.”

  Two of the most prominent British boxing scribes were seated side-by-side in the Superdome that night. Hugh McIlvanney, then writing for the Observer, had been confident of a Leonard victory, while the Independent ’s Jim Lawton had penned an advance that was a paean to Duran’s “implacable will.”

  “Based on what I’d seen in the last two rounds in Montreal, I didn’t think Duran had a prayer,” recalled McIlvanney. “I’d bet about $300, which was a lot for me, on Leonard. When people asked why I said, ‘[Duran] doesn’t even want to train, because he knows in his heart he can’t win.’

  “When Duran quit, it took a moment for it to sink in, but then I couldn‘t resist,” continued McIlvanney. “I turned to Lawton and said, ‘Well, James, it looks like the bottom’s dropped out of the fucking implacability market.’”

  Duran
disappeared in the pandemonium. The press was left to besiege Arcel and Brown for explanations, but in the immediate aftermath the Panamanian’s elderly cornermen appeared to be as befuddled as the rest of us.

  “The guy’s supposed to be an animal, and he quit,” said Freddie Brown moments afterward. “You’d think that an animal would fight right up to the end.”

  In the long history of boxing there had been few precedents. In his 1949 fight against Jake LaMotta, the French middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan had torn the supraspinatus muscle in his right shoulder. Though in agony, Cerdan had continued to fight, using only his left, until his corner prevailed upon him to retire. And, of course, Sonny Liston had quit on his stool in his first fight against Ali, failing to answer the bell for the seventh after incurring a shoulder injury. But Duran hadn’t looked−or fought−like an injured man.

  “Something happened in the ring, and I don’t know what it was,” Arcel shook his head. “I thought he’d broke his arm or something. I’ve never seen anything like it. After the sixth he said something about his arms feeling stiff, but he’s never done anything like this, ever.”

  Perhaps, it was suggested, Leonard’s making a monkey out of him might have had something to do with it.

  “I don’t rule it out,” conceded Arcel. “Leonard controlled the fight, and it frustrated him. He just quit.”

  Half an hour later an alternate theory, blaming a “stomach-ache” resulting from Duran’s post-weigh-in gluttony, quickly spread around the pressroom.

  Duran was reported to have blamed “cramps in my stomach and in my right arm.”

  “I got so weak I couldn’t go on,” Duran was said to have explained. “Leonard was weak, but I didn’t have the strength to pressure him.”

  WBC President Jose Sulaiman told Red Smith that Duran had told him that “when he threw a right hand in [the eighth] round, something happened to his shoulder.”