I Am Duran

by Roberto Duran

  I returned to New York for the first time in almost three years when I defeated Edwin Viruet by ten-round decision on September 30, 1975. It’s a date inscribed in the memory of every boxing fan, because we were on the undercard at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, to the main event being shown on closed-circuit television: the “Thrilla in Manila” between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. I stuck around to watch, and I’ll never forget it.

  That same year, I would first cross paths with another legend in boxing, Don King, when Eleta signed a three-fight package with him to promote my fights, starting with my lightweight title defense against Leoncio Ortíz in Puerto Rico in December. I won by knockout in the fifteenth round, but I would have done so earlier if he hadn’t run away from me so much. My corner told me to take it easy on him in the thirteenth, so I could build my strength to knock him out in the fourteenth or fifteenth, and that’s exactly what I did. A right cross to the chin and he was finished. I was pleased, because after my last two fights in Puerto Rico had been won on a decision, I wanted to prove to the fans there that I still lived up to the name Manos de Piedra. I didn’t want to be remembered as one of those fighters who just went looking for the points. Every time I went into the ring, I wanted to knock the guy out cold, and it was important for me to get back to doing that again.

  Then that idiot Viruet got in my face as I was going back to the dressing room, challenging me for another shot at the title. Why? I’d already beaten him. I got annoyed and took a few swings at him for good measure, and it took the police to break things up. Sure, I said, I would love to give him another chance. So I could punish him some more! And that’s exactly what would happen.

  Viruet was a nobody. Ali, on the other hand, was somebody. Like everyone else, I’d been watching him for years. I finally met him the following year when I was training in Miami Beach to fight Saoul Mamby in May 1976. Ali was there to film the movie The Greatest. One day, a guard stops me at the door of the 5th St. Gym and tells me to wait, they were busy filming. After ten minutes, they let me through—I was lucky because I was the only boxer they let in to train. While I was minding my own business, Ali kept watching me. I hit the speed bag and the heavy bag for a while and then I started skipping rope.

  “I’ve never seen a man jump rope like that,” he said. “Quite extraordinary.”

  Afterward, a few female police officers showed up and he started talking to them playfully and giving them kisses. Ali’s wife was there, and I overheard her say, “You did it and now I’m going to leave you.” Even with my sketchy English I understood what she was saying, and I’ll never forget it. “You and me are through.” I just stared at them, thinking, You can’t say that—he’s the greatest of all time!

  In the years to come, after I became more famous, Ali couldn’t fill up Madison Square Garden like he used to, so they put my name on the undercard to draw fans and hope they would stick around to watch Ali. By then he knew, and I knew, that people had come to see Roberto Durán, not Muhammad Ali. But this was still in the future.

  Miami Beach had become one of my favorite places outside Panama. I loved New York, of course, but Miami was special ever since my first fight there in 1975, when I knocked out José Peterson. The food was similar to food back home, and so were the customs—and the language, of course—and the Cuban people who lived there were great to me. My first friend there was this black Cuban guy I met about a month or two before defending my WBA lightweight title against Vilomar Fernandez at the Fontainebleau Hotel in January 1977. I’d go whoring around Miami with him, and there was a strip club he’d take me to.

  Although I was playing around more and enjoying my time in Miami on my own, it did nothing to affect my performance in the ring, and I took Fernandez out in the thirteenth round. Knockout—boom!—retained my title. Two more victories, and here came Viruet, back for more. Apparently he hadn’t had enough punishment. I’d beaten the crap out of him once already and now he was saying he’d beaten me when we fought two years before and he made me miss and look bad. He said he was going to put me into retirement, but I guess he hadn’t read enough of my history. I’m the boxer who forced fighters to retire. And he would pay for what he’d said. I came in fit, at 134½ pounds. I hit him with a lot of body shots to start the fight, through the first four rounds. I kept the pressure on him throughout the fight, but he did a good job of moving in and out to avoid getting hurt. I had him on the ropes a lot, and although he went the distance, I was always in control. My victory over him in 1977 was the eleventh defense of my WBA lightweight title.

  But I had bigger plans, and bigger men to face, including de Jesús for the third time. Don King—Eleta was talking to him regularly now—had floated the idea of New York, at Madison Square Garden, or Miami, but he settled on Las Vegas. Wherever it was to be, I wanted that son of a bitch badly. It was another grudge match, and this time I was hoping he wouldn’t run like he did in the first rematch.

  For months before the fight he talked shit about me. De Jesús had won the World Boxing Council belt after beating Ishimatsu Suzuki, and had three more defenses, and he thought that gave him permission to say what he wanted about anyone. I just wanted to shut his big mouth.

  It was the first time in the history of Las Vegas there had been two Latin fighters on the marquee at Caesars Palace. We were fighting for the big prize: the undisputed world lightweight title. Nobody had unified the division since 1971. For me, this was a real chance to make history, not to mention a real chance for de Jesús to get his ass kicked again.

  De Jesús was having the same problem as me in making the weight, but it was worse for him since he was too muscular. When you have big arms and a big chest, it’s especially hard to make weight. Because we were both training in Miami, I could see he was struggling—you just had to look at his physique. I drew great strength from this. Whenever the training was getting tough, I knew it was nothing compared with what de Jesús was going through. “This guy,” I told Plomo, “is not going to beat me.”

  Maybe de Jesús knew that, too. I heard he had to really work hard until the last minute to make weight. I had to shed fifteen pounds in a month, which wasn’t such a big deal for me since I was used to it, and came in at 134¼. He was 134, with that big mouth and all. But I knew he was in trouble and so did he, which is why he tried to start some shit before we even got in the ring. On the day of the weigh-in, there was almost a big fight between my guys and his. He threw a punch at me with his bare fists, I swung back, somebody waved a chair in the air—it was all about to kick off.

  Maybe Esteban was trying to psyche me out, but it was all mierda, bullshit. He hired brujos, witch doctors, to cast a Santería hex on me, but I told them where to go. I think they were even scattering some kind of Santería dust in the ring as I was warming up. It just made me laugh.

  There were almost 5,000 fans at Caesars Palace that night, lots from Panama cheering me on, and just as many from Puerto Rico rooting for de Jesús. Don King said people from both countries were showing up with suitcases full of money to bet on their favorite fighter.

  The advantage I had is that when he’d knocked me down a second time in Panama, he’d caught me off guard. I’d just wanted to knock him out and hadn’t taken the time to study him properly. Instead, I’d just traded punches. The third time around I wasn’t going to do that even though that’s what he expected. They had everything planned, thinking he was going to knock me out with all that witchcraft nonsense. So I just boxed him, always waiting for an opening. I knew that’s what I had to do—he wasn’t very intelligent when you boxed him. It was to his advantage to get into a brawl. I wasn’t going to do that.

  I hit him with a jab with my first punch and he smiled. He wasn’t going to be smiling for much of the night. Ninety seconds into the fight, he was bleeding from the nose. I almost knocked him out with a left hook at the end of the round. As the fight went on I could have knocked him out sooner, but
I needed to be cautious since I hadn’t fought in four months. I would have fought him all night if I’d had to. I knew I was going to win.

  By the seventh round I knew he was tired. I was, too, but I was holding some strength in reserve. And the fight went exactly as I’d planned. In the tenth he went down again, this time with a body shot to the ribs. His feet lifted off the ground. I could feel my fist grind into his body—can you imagine what it must have felt like for him? De Jesús had nothing. He was reaching, pulling punches. In the eleventh I kept pounding him with body blows. That kills a boxer: it sucks the air out of you, sucks the life out of you, and de Jesús did not have much life left in this fight. He wasn’t going to last fifteen rounds.

  Then the twelfth. When he went to throw a left hook, I hit him with a right cross counterpunch to the jaw that dropped him. He crawled back to a neutral corner, got up in plenty of time, but he was done. And then I went after him like a hurricane. I hit him eleven, twelve times, didn’t miss once. I knew I had him. I knew he was going to go. I knew I had to kill him as soon as possible. It would only be a matter of time. He went down again. De Jesús co-trainer finally threw in the towel and ran into the ring to stop him from taking more punishment while I had him against the ropes. The referee didn’t stop it, de Jesús’ people did. I wasn’t surprised when he went down. That’s why they call me Manos de Piedra. Hands of Stone.

  I almost knocked somebody else out that night, too. After the fight, one of de Jesús’ manzanillos jumped into the ring and tried to start something. I thought about punching him but backed off. Maybe it was one of those brujos. Santería, my ass. At 2:32 of that twelfth round, I joined the heavyweight Muhammad Ali and middleweight Rodrigo Váldez as the only undisputed champions in boxing.

  The January 30, 1978, issue of Sports Illustrated reported:

  Moving fluidly and jabbing, slipping punches and countering rather than swarming over De Jesús, he stalked him, relentlessly wearing him down and coolly destroying him with short, savage punches to the body. For 11 rounds Durán bested the classic boxer at his own game, robbing him of his speed and his will to fight, and only then did he permit himself the luxury of putting De Jesús away.

  That night I was all by myself on the big stage. I could never erase the loss, but that night I erased de Jesús, and that felt pretty good.

  I’d won my thirty-first consecutive fight. My sixty-first victory in sixty-two fights, my eleventh knockout in twelve title defenses. But most important, I had my revenge against the only man to beat me. And I had a lot of money, again: $100,000 after taxes, plus Don King’s $1,000 bonus under the table. I wasn’t so bothered about a Puerto Rico–Panama rivalry. He was their idol, but I wasn’t as popular as I had been in Panama after the crap people still talked about me after losing the first fight. My interest was in winning and then going drinking somewhere. And shutting up all the Panamanians who were talking bad about me. And that’s exactly what I did.

  Of course I celebrated! Roberto Durán always celebrates! A few hours after the fight I was walking around Caesars Palace with no shirt, barefoot, a towel around my neck and a bottle of champagne in my hand. Two old people looked at me in the elevator and didn’t seem to like what they saw. I didn’t care. Dios mío! I thought New York was a big city with a lot of lights. But this place was crazy, with so many beautiful women. I hopped in the car with some of my buddies and went off to party and get drunk—like the Americans say, Vegas never closes. I even ran into de Jesús and invited him back to my room to play dominoes—he said he couldn’t beat me in the ring but he could take me at dominoes. But he never showed up. Later I got dressed up in a tuxedo and a ruffled shirt to catch Sammy Davis, Jr.’s nightclub act, drank some more, and at three in the morning had a large steak. What did I care? I wasn’t going to train tomorrow, or the next day. I was now the best pound-per-pound fighter in the world. I had had three great fights with de Jesús, the first man to beat me, but I didn’t bear him a grudge. The world would see that a few years later.

  After this, I had another fight in New York. It was Viruet, not Edwin, but his brother Adolfo. I guess they wanted me to beat up the entire family. Sure, why not? It was hard, as usual, to make weight, but it was harder for me to fight at all because now all of my opponents were running away. Nobody wanted to fight me. They were making me become a salsa singer.

  It was a non-title fight, so I was able to weigh in at 142, seven pounds heavier than the lightweight limit. I felt good, and not just because I wasn’t forced to beat the scale. I’d be fighting at Madison Square Garden again for the first time in six years. And I was getting a nice payday: $100,000 after taxes.

  Viruet came to fight that night, but he wasn’t going to beat me. I caught him with some good shots in the eighth to end the round, and I knew he was in trouble. I certainly wasn’t, even though I’d had a point taken away in the seventh because the referee said I hit Viruet below the belt. After the tenth and final round, both judges and referee Arthur Mercante had me winning with a unanimous decision.

  I hated both those Viruet brothers, and they didn’t like me. Edwin came after me because I said some shit about his father after the fight, but the security people were able to break it up. He was lucky. Maybe I could have beaten both brothers in one night—that would have been another one for the record books!

  I was more than ready to move up to welterweight by the time I fought Monroe Brooks on December 8, 1978. In fact, I weighed 147 for that fight, twelve pounds more than the lightweight limit. It didn’t matter, though, and I ripped him up pretty good, with a number of head shots that connected over seven rounds, before I finished him off with a body punch in the eighth. A left hook to the body just below the rib cage and he was done.

  And I was done as a lightweight, too. I had a reputation for enjoying the party scene, which I didn’t mind at all, but it did mean that Freddie Brown had to get to work on me before every fight. He had already forced me to take off more than twenty-five pounds six or seven times. He trained me like I was in the army. “I no strong! I no strong!” I would tell him. He wanted to starve me; I wanted to eat. The problem was, I got bored with the lack of real competition. Sometimes I wondered whether we would ever actually get into the ring! So what happened? I got fat, and then it would be hard to make weight. I loved to eat, I liked to drink beer, and I loved Coca-Cola. When I trained for a fight, I would sit with Fula and the rest of my family and I wouldn’t be able to eat what they ate. I’d look at them and say, “Eat that sandwich—it’s good. Enjoy it”—and then they’d feel bad because I couldn’t eat.

  But they were right to feel bad. I was suffering. Sometimes I wouldn’t eat for days. I’d stick lemons in my mouth, hoping to burn away the fat. Of course it would have been easier just to stick to a disciplined diet, but I couldn’t help myself. When my brother Pototo was staying at the hotel, I used to ask him to buy me six-packs of Coke and I’d hide the cans under my bed. Sometimes there’d be thirty or forty Coke cans under there! Or I’d hide them in my luggage so Freddie Brown wouldn’t see them. After the weigh-in, I’d take them out and start drinking Coca-Cola until I couldn’t swallow any more.

  Freddie Brown drove me crazy. He wouldn’t let me eat anything, and I still had to keep training, sparring. I had no strength—I was dying from hunger. My brother, bless him. I’d often say, “Hermanito”—little brother—“when you go down to eat, could you bring me back a bread roll or two?” And he’d grab a couple and put them in his pocket so Freddie wouldn’t see, and I’d wash them down with a glass of water. No butter. That would ease the hunger pangs so I could get to sleep. And after the weigh-in, we’d want a treat: ice cream and Coca-Cola, all mixed up, and both of us would dig in.

  But Brown was so paranoid, he kept a scale in my room, the same one I’d used since turning pro, called la romana—it would come back into my life after I retired. Brown wanted to make sure I wasn’t gaining weight when he wasn’t looking, so when I f
inished running, he’d weigh me. When I had breakfast, he’d weigh me. Before I sparred, he’d weigh me. After I sparred, he’d weigh me. He’d even try to train me in the soldiers’ barracks in Panama, where he thought he could control things. Chuleta! That’s what he thought! I’d get my friends to sneak steaks in! It was such a pain in the ass to make weight. Besides, I was getting bored with the division: I’d successfully defended my title twelve times and I no longer felt challenged. I knew there were bigger guys out there, and that meant more money. Eleta was talking about the possibility of my taking on the WBA welterweight champ José “Pipino” Cuevas later in the year, but a better fight would come my way.

  So much for my lightweight title. I wanted other opportunities, and I could no longer make weight even if I tried. I gave up my undisputed lightweight championship in February 1979. And now, two months later, I was fighting an American named Jimmy Heair in Las Vegas, in my first fight in seven years without the title of world champion. It was a ten-round preliminary bout, and I won in a unanimous decision. Of course, Vegas was a big boxing city, and during that trip I visited the great American boxer Joe Louis, who was in poor health by then and in a wheelchair.

  Back in Panama, I picked up an unusual pet: a lion. I love animals and I like having them around—dogs, especially English bulldogs, birds, iguanas . . . But this pet was going to be very different. I had a Mexican friend who owned a circus in Panama. I loved visiting it and messing around with the lions. But eventually business started to go bad and my friend had to sell two lions to a zoo in Panama. He gave me an eagle, but a lion was what I really wanted. Then I heard one of the female lions was pregnant. I took the eagle to Roberto, the guy who ran the zoo, and offered him the eagle for the lion. I came home with a lion cub, and we named him Walla. He would drink two or three quarts of milk a day. I had his claws filed down and his mane cut, and I had to have him neutered. We managed to domesticate him, and I used to take him everywhere. I really loved taking him to carnivals and having people come up to look at him. I even bought a big truck so I could take him places. One day I took him back to see Roberto.