I Am Duran

by Roberto Duran

  He looked scared. “How did you do this?”

  “I domesticated him,” I said.

  His mouth was open. I picked up the lion. “Now I want to see what I gave you.”

  The eagle spread his wings. They were huge. “I’m going to have to let him go,” said Roberto. “He’s just too big.”

  But Walla was great, living at home where everyone played with him, including the kids and my eighty-year-old neighbor. Once a week or so, I’d give him a bath—we raised him like a pet dog. When Chavo was about seventeen months old, he toddled out onto the patio, and my wife yelled, “Be careful—the lion’s loose!” Next thing we see, Walla is licking Chavo, affectionately giving him a tongue bath.

  That lion was so smart. He was able to open the door to the house with his paws. He got along so well with our bulldog, Jango, they slept together, ate together. In retrospect, it was incredible—you’d never be allowed to do that now, not even in Panama! But we were never scared. Even my wife would put milk in her cupped hands and let him drink. His tongue was like sandpaper! I was the only man in Panama, Eleta would joke, who could clear the streets by taking a lion out for a walk. But I was the king of Panama, so why not have a lion in my entourage?

  I did take him to the InterContinental Hotel in Panama once. I left him there for the day while I went out, and when the maid came in to clean the room, she screamed like crazy. When I got back, I apologized to her—I didn’t know she was going to clean the room. I think it was probably the most memorable day of her life.

  Walla was getting bigger by the day and so was I. I left him behind to go to New York again, this time to train to fight Carlos Palomino. I’d gone up to 147 and fought against four easy opponents, waiting for a shot at the welterweight title, when the opportunity came up to fight Palomino in Madison Square Garden in June 1979. He was a former WBC welterweight champion, who had won the title from John H. Stracey of Britain and defended it several times. Although he wasn’t still the champion, he was the number-one contender. Freddie Brown had now been in my corner for five years, and he knew, as I did, that this was a big one for me. It was in a place I loved, obviously, but it was also my chance to prove that I could still carry power at a heavier weight. Before losing his title to Wilfred Benítez, who beat him by split decision for the WBC welterweight title in January 1979, Palomino had said he would retire by the time he was thirty to pursue a career in acting. When he fought me, he was only two months shy of his thirtieth birthday, and I made it my goal to help him fulfill his wish.

  One of the reasons I love New York is that you can bump into anyone at any time, not like in Panama, where we all live very separate lives, depending on which social class we’re in. One day, our camp decided to go play softball in Central Park. This guy’s walking toward us—it’s Robert De Niro. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Franco, one of the guys in my camp, says to him, “This is my friend, the boxer Stone Hands.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” says De Niro. And then he says, “Can I play softball with you guys? Can I bring some of my friends? Give me an hour.” Half an hour later, we see a bunch of people with him—they’re all actors in town with him to film Raging Bull. My mouth is wide open.

  “Let’s kick their asses,” says one of my friends.

  De Niro replies, “Wanna bet? What about loser pays for dinner?”

  I knew if we lost, I could bring him to Victor’s. It would be great publicity, and I wouldn’t have to pick up the tab.

  But we ended up kicking their asses. So I call Victor to save us a table for twenty, and once there, De Niro says, “Champagne for everyone!” We drank it like it was water. By the time we were done eating and drinking, the tab was over $7,000. It was a good thing we didn’t have to pick up the check.

  De Niro invited me back to his apartment, a penthouse in the Mayflower. People like Joe Pesci were there; he was also in Raging Bull. Finally, I had to tell De Niro I couldn’t drink anymore—I had to be up at five a.m. to run.

  I loved watching movies. Back then, there weren’t a lot of movies in Spanish, but in New York there was a Blockbuster off Broadway where I’d go buy twenty or thirty VHS movies at a time. Each time, I came back to Panama with a suitcase full, mostly action movies, and the family used to fight over which one to watch first.

  I got a bit part in a movie myself. For a change of scenery, I was training briefly in Los Angeles. Sly Stallone started hanging around the gym—he was a big boxing fan, and liked me a lot, and they offered me a part in Rocky II sparring against him.

  When filming got under way, Stallone and I spent a lot of time practicing, and I used to work him over in the sparring sessions. He tried to skip like I did, but he couldn’t even though he tried hard—he was a big guy. He was in good shape and taking the filming seriously, and I think he started believing he could keep up with me in the ring. Chuleta, right! He wasn’t going to hurt me. During one of the sparring sessions, I tagged him pretty good and I think he got the message. “Durán, don’t hit me in the nose,” he told me. “Remember, I’m an actor, not a boxer.” He even wore headgear, just in case—I didn’t. In the film you can hear Rocky’s trainer yelling, “Speed, speed! Catch that punk!” and “Can’t you catch that little squirt? Cut off the ring! Get the lead out.” That was fiction, just a lot of fake boxing, but the reality was that Stallone said sparring with me felt like his head was being lowered into a Cuisinart blender.

  I met a lot of Hollywood people in Palm Springs—Kirk Douglas, Bob Hope, Trini Lopez—because that’s where Don King would send me to train. I used to love being around them, imagining what the guys back home would think—Durán, the kid who stole mangoes for a living, hanging out with Hollywood royalty. To show off for them, I would hit the speed bag with my head. They say the hands are quicker than the eyes, so I would work on making my eyes just as quick. I wouldn’t lose sight of the bag. The gyms would fill up, especially because people loved the way I jumped rope. I would drop down into a squat position and then shoot back up. Then I would cross my hands over while I skipped. It took tremendous strength, speed, and coordination. I came up with that technique all on my own.

  But my focus at that time was on Palomino and making a mark in a new division. It was on the undercard of a nationally televised world heavyweight title fight between Larry Holmes and Mike Weaver, but everybody was talking about me and Palomino. Muhammad Ali had retired the year before, and boxing fans were now showing more interest in the lower weight classes. And I was a star, of course. But there were a lot of people who thought I might not be able to handle a fighter of Palomino’s ability because of the move up in weight. I paid no attention. I guess Palomino was expecting me to disrespect him at the press conference, but I went easy on him. I even asked him for an autograph for my son. “I feared the worst,” Palomino told reporters. “I figured he’d start his usual name-calling act. But he walks up to me, shakes my hand, and tells me that he respects me as a fighter. He caught me off guard and . . . that took the fire out of me.”

  It was more than words that took the fire out of him. It was my fists, even though his reach was two and a half inches longer. I knocked him right into retirement. It was a great night from the start. The crowd was behind me and gave me a great ovation as I entered the ring. I was aggressive early, and it was clear it was going to be a good night for me. I pounded him inside, hurt him. I had too much speed for him and he couldn’t handle my feints. By the third round, I was laughing. By the fifth round, I could hear the crowd chant, “Doo-ran! Doo-ran!” as they waited to see Palomino go down.

  I gave them what they wanted seconds into the sixth round when I dropped him with an overhand right. It happened so fast that Ray Arcel was still at the top of the ring apron. It was only the second time Palomino had been down in thirty-three fights. He got up quickly, but only to take more punishment. He was bleeding behind the left ear. I almost dropped him with another right at the end of the round. By
the tenth and final round, I was laughing and taunting him. He had nothing for El Cholo. I won every round; maybe I won every minute. Two judges had me winning 99–90 and the third 99–91. I knew then that this was where I belonged.

  At the end of the fight I fell to my knees to give thanks. Then I got up and hugged Palomino. I stood up on the ring apron, grabbed a small Panamanian flag, and acknowledged all the fans who’d been cheering for me.

  “Durán [brought] a sense of almost surrealistic beauty to savagery, fighting for the first time as a welterweight,” Pat Putnam wrote in Sports Illustrated,

  and, after ten brutal rounds, chasing Carlos Palomino, the former WBC champion, into retirement. . . . [Durán] bewildered Palomino with flicking head and shoulder feints; he battered him with punches thrown at blinding speed. At times, just for fun, he feinted from the left, feinted from the right, and then, with Palomino in a flux of frantic confusion, stepped back and flashed a wolfish grin as Palomino untangled himself.

  There was one thing Palomino got right that night. After he admitted to Larry Merchant of HBO that he wasn’t what he used to be, Merchant asked him if he thought I was going to be the next welterweight champion of the world.

  “I believe so,” he said.

  “He doesn’t speak English very well,” Merchant said of me that night, “but he speaks boxing as well as any man who’s ever lived.”

  I was now 66–1 and ready for more.

  But the celebration after the fight took a sad turn that night. While I’d been in training, Chaflán, my friend and mentor from my childhood days, died. They kept the news from me until after the fight because they didn’t want me to be upset. Fula finally broke the news. I was sad, even cried a little bit. Back in Panama, I went to see his elderly mother and his twin brother and gave them some money. Chaflán was a good man who did a lot for me. He taught me about adversity. He always said I had a friend in him. He always promised, with a smile on his face, that “todo estará bien.” Everything will be okay.

  FOUR

  SUGAR RAY MEETS CHARLES MANSON

  IN EARLY 1980, I got a call from Eleta. “Do you know about this boxer who’s a sensation among the gringos? He’s a proper star, and a terrific boxer. Do you want to fight him for a world title?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s very fast . . .”

  “So he’s fast. Blah, blah.”

  “No, I mean fast. He’s a quick black kid.”

  “I don’t care. What’s his name?”

  “Sugar Ray Leonard.”

  In those days, that was how fights got arranged—one call and it was fixed up. To tell the truth, I’d never heard of the guy. I wasn’t sitting at home, checking out every boxer on the planet. I didn’t waste my time thinking about who might be out there—my job was to train for the next fight and win it. Everything else I left up to Eleta. All I knew was, I was destroying everyone they put in front of me; some fast little black kid from the United States wasn’t going to beat me.

  Before I knew what had happened, the media had broken the story that I was going to fight Leonard, and it all kicked off big-time. I was at home in Panama watching the news with Flaco Bala, and all they could talk about was this American kid, Sugar Ray Leonard, and all the money he was going to make fighting me. I was immediately pissed off. Why was he getting all the money? And why all the attention? Didn’t they know about me, Manos de Piedra? Flaco Bala said he saw a look in my eyes, a mean look he’d never seen before.

  “I hate him,” I told Flaco Bala, even though I’d barely heard of the guy. “I will beat the living shit out of him.”

  “Don’t hate him,” Flaco Bala said. “It’s just the way things are in America. We’ll beat him, and beating him, we’ll beat the system.”

  I said nothing, but inside I still felt the same. Leonard was a pretty boy, undefeated (27–0), and everyone liked him for his charm and showmanship, like Muhammad Ali. He had all these endorsements from American companies like 7UP, and the media loved him for his good looks. I obviously didn’t have the same things going for me because I didn’t speak English, and I wasn’t going to learn just for some shitty commercial.

  Ray was the Big American Hero, a Superman, a god. And here was this Latino nobody could figure out, except that he was a genuine force of nature. But they could not ignore me in the ring: 71–1, with fifty-six knockouts, a legend already. Combined, our records were 98–1, and I’d done most of the work. I didn’t give a crap about the American Hero. Or Superman. All I wanted to do was defeat the pinup boy of the United States. As Don King, my promoter, put it, I was “the little killer.” I had three months to prepare for the fight, and I promised myself I would train harder than I had ever done before. I was going to show them that if you underestimate Durán, you are making a big mistake.

  At this time, Latino fighters were only starting to get attention in the United States. There were popular Puerto Rican fighters like de Jesús on the East Coast, but a lot of people in New York resented Puerto Ricans, who were seen as economic migrants in search of a better life. Most Americans still weren’t aware of what was happening with the Mexican and other Hispanic fighters in Texas and California and on the West Coast—fighters like me, José Nápoles, and other international stars. But my record meant that people were paying attention to me above all others, and my saying just how I was going to beat the crap out of Leonard only made them come back for more. Muhammad Ali was coming to the end of his career and no one was interested in seeing an old fighter in the ring—they all wanted to see Durán. But all the American journalists could write about was Leonard this, Leonard that . . . They were still infatuated with the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where five members of the U.S. boxing team—Leonard, Howard Davis, Jr., Leo Randolph, the Spinks brothers—had won gold medals. If there was any interest in foreign fighters, it was in the guys making money in Europe, like Carlos Monzón.

  Leonard didn’t know much about me, either, since I was a lightweight and he was a welterweight—we’d never even fought on the same card. Later he’d say he first saw me fight in Las Vegas, when he’d been sitting near Jackie Gleason. Leonard was a big fan of Gleason—loved him in The Honeymooners—and he’d turned to Gleason and said, “Hey, I’m going to fight him.” And Gleason had said, “Don’t you ever say that again. Don’t fight that guy—he’s a monster! He’ll kill you.” Leonard was so offended by this, he even quit watching The Honeymooners. But Gleason was right. Leonard had plenty to worry about.

  I wasn’t short of motivation to beat him: for a start, there was the money. I was getting only $1.5 million, whereas Leonard was getting more than $8 million, but the closer we got to the fight, the less I cared about that and the more I cared about the opportunity to write my name in history. When I beat Leonard, as I knew I would, I would have done something no other boxer in history had achieved: beaten the undefeated American golden boy. I started telling reporters that I would fight for nothing, that I had no respect for Leonard, that he had a big mouth and talked too much—maybe if I punched him in the face enough times, he would shut up. The press liked that: now they could see Leonard had a real fight ahead of him.

  In a lot of ways, I was Mike Tyson before Mike Tyson came along. Fighters would take one look at me and crap in their pants. Leonard would be no different. It was starting to dawn on the Americans that they’d never come across anything like me before—this eerie, deadly being with his jet-black hair and his dark eyes and his bad intentions. “El Diablo,” they called me: the Devil. I wasn’t going to do anything to make them think otherwise.

  So when I faced Leonard, I was the “other”: the outsider, the mysterious foreigner, fighting the Great American Hero who was just so dignified and upstanding and such a wonderful personality and so media-friendly and all that crap. Good versus evil, and I was the bad guy. It was like all those movies I used to watch when I was a pelao in Panama: cowboys versus Indians. Chuleta, I
had Mexican blood in me—close enough. The best part was, I could not give a damn. They could write what they liked about me—I couldn’t read English.

  I never got involved in the financial side of my career, but whatever they were saying about me, good or bad, it seemed to be generating a lot of interest. The fight had even brought two rival promoters together for the first time, Don King and Bob Arum, who handled Leonard and had set up fights for Muhammad Ali and other famous boxers. King and Arum didn’t like each other, but they did like money. And this fight was going to make a lot of money for a lot of people.

  Before the 1980s, all the big fights were on prime-time TV, but now promoters were asking fight fans to pay money for the best fights. The pay-per-view and closed-circuit TV markets were just starting up, although, until then, mostly for Ali’s big fights, especially those against Joe Frazier. But now Durán versus Leonard was getting its share of attention. Arum said this fight would be the beginning of a revolution in boxing and television, and he was right. It was going to be seen on closed-circuit TV in more than 250 theaters and arenas, and also on two pay-per-view channels in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio. ABC Sports wouldn’t show it live but would air it later, on July 19, on Wide World of Sports.

  In the meantime, there was plenty of time to hype the fight, and it obviously helped sales if there was bad blood between us. Things started out okay, but it all changed in April when we went to the Waldorf Astoria in New York for King, Eleta, and the others to set the date for June 20, 1980, at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal: “The Brawl in Montreal,” they’d dubbed it. With the cameras flashing, Leonard smiled at me and said, “Hi.” This was the first time I’d met him, but already I hated him.