De Cubas was able to track Flex down and Robin brought him to see me. Flex said he was already committed that day.
“You know how many people would love to sing at the service for Tyson’s daughter?” I told him. “God put you in this moment. There were a lot of great singers He could have picked, but He chose you. You’re the man.”
At the private service, attended only by family and special guests, Flex sang an acoustic version of “Dime Si Te Vas con Él” (Tell Me If You Go with Him) with the choir, and from what I was told, everyone in the congregation was crying, even those who didn’t understand Spanish.
“Exodus had a funeral worthy of a dignitary,” Tyson would write later. “I didn’t realize it until then, but I suddenly knew the deep reason that I had always loved Durán. There is no way I could ever repay him.”
Flex didn’t charge Tyson a dime.
I was now living comfortably in retirement, still in the same house Eleta bought for me in 1972 after I beat Buchanan. I’d returned to El Cangrejo a hero still. In a strange twist of events, Martín Torrijos, the kid I knew from El Chorrillo, was now president of Panama! It was he who commissioned the statue in my honor that now stands a few blocks from my house, with a plaque that reads En Honor a Roberto Durán S. “Mano de Piedra.” Seis Veces Campeón del Mundo. La Leyenda. In Honor of Roberto Durán. “Mano de Piedra.” Six-Time World Champion. The Legend. I’m not going to argue with that.
Look at the legacy. There were the Four Kings: Durán, Leonard, Hagler, and Hearns. Between 1980 and 1989, we gave boxing fans everything and more when we fought each other nine times altogether, all spectacular fights. We were all stars, and we all wanted to beat the shit out of each other. We shook hands and then we fought. We hated each other’s guts and now we smile, pose for pictures, and have a drink together every so often. That’s boxing.
Maybe it’s better to say it was boxing, because we’ll never see another era like it. Fans had a ringside seat to history. It was, as the Americans say, the Golden Age of Boxing, and me, Hearns, Leonard, and Hagler were at the center of it, trading blows, drawing blood. If we’d fought in different times, each of us could have ruled the sport all by ourselves. Instead, we beat each other up, snatching title belts when we could. That’s why we’re remembered so fondly.
Hagler had left the sport first, in 1987, pissed off at losing to Leonard. He’d fought sixty-seven times, with three losses and two draws. Leonard had retired in 1997 with a 36–3–1 record. Hearns would fight all the way into 2006, retiring with a 61–5–1 record. But I outlasted them all. I won 103 fights.
In 2014, there was a promotional tour for the Kimball book Four Kings, and Leonard told me Marvin Hagler didn’t want to come and he didn’t know why. Hagler was still upset, I told him, because he’d beaten him back in 1987. “Damn right I did,” said Leonard.
It also turned out that for years and years Leonard had had a complex about our fight in New Orleans. It made him really angry, I think, that nobody gave him credit for beating me. He knew he didn’t beat me when I was doing all right: he beat me because it was not my night and I turned away in a split-second decision I never knew would haunt me for so long or have such consequences for both of us. Instead of making him look good, it had made him look bad. He’d had it on his conscience ever since and had been searching for some way of living with it.
So, thirty-three years after the fight, a filmmaker came to make a documentary about “No más,” and we met once again. It was going to be the film’s big ending, and as we faced each other in a ring in Panama, I could see how uncomfortable he was, the frustration in his eyes when he looked at me, but he didn’t hate me anymore. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and at least now we’ve come to terms with the past. We see each other quite a bit—on promotional tours, events in Vegas, stuff like that—as friends. I used to call him my black brother. We can look at each other now with respect and love.
But out of all the Four Kings, I’d put my legacy the highest. Never mind the great victories, look at all the accolades. I received The Ring magazine’s Comeback of the Year award for 1983 and 1989—the only fighter to win it twice. In 1999, the Associated Press ranked me as the greatest lightweight and the seventh-greatest fighter of the twentieth century. In 2001, The Ring ranked me as the greatest lightweight of all time. In 2002, it had me as the fifth-best fighter of the past eighty years. El Diablo, Manos de Piedra. A Latin badass. That’s why they put me in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in New York.
It’s why they put me in the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame, too, where I was inducted in 2014 by none other than Sugar Ray Leonard. Because my English is very limited, my daughter Irichelle stood up and spoke for me. “Ever since I can remember, our life has been about boxing. Growing up a Durán kid was not always easy, because it involved a lot of sacrifice. And at an age when you need your parents, a lot of times he wasn’t there. But we always supported him because we knew he was working for our future.”
“I would like to thank America,” I then told the audience. “America gave me so much. America put up with me for five decades. I’m very thankful for that.” I was so grateful for that moment, and to be able to share it with Irichelle and Robin.
Leonard and I shared a big hug. “Congratulations, my champion,” he said. “Congratulations, my friend.”
In 2011, I opened a restaurant a few blocks from where I live called La Tasca de Durán, serving traditional Panamanian dishes. It’s done pretty well—of course, we get a lot of people coming because of my name.
We’ve decorated the place with all sorts of memorabilia: my old gloves, championship belts, boxing trunks, boots—even an imprint of my hands, manos de piedra! It’s like a museum inside a restaurant. I have tapes of all my famous fights running on a continuous loop: the first fight against Leonard, the victory over Barkley, the victory over Buchanan. The walls are covered with great pictures documenting my career: me with Sugar Ray Leonard, me with Manny Pacquiao, me with Mike Tyson, with Floyd Mayweather, Jr. With Sylvester Stallone during the filming of Rocky II. Me with movie stars, and with all the great champions.
There may be a whole lot of pictures at my restaurant, but there is only one scale. It stands out on the patio in front of the restaurant and it’s one of my proudest possessions. This scale has a lot of history. Many great champions like Ismael Laguna and Ñato Marcel have stepped onto it. But it’s precious to me because I weighed in for all of my professional fights on it, from when I started until when I finished. A few years ago the people at the WBC were going to throw it away, but a friend of mine rescued it for me. It would look a lot better if it hadn’t been painted, just left it as it was back then, but there you are.
In October 2012, Don King showed up at the restaurant. I had no warning—I’d already gone home for the night and was almost asleep when they called to tell me.
“Mi hijo!”—My son!—King exclaimed when I got there. I gave him a hug. “Mi boxeador! Manos de Piedra! Manos de Piedra!” After dinner, he went into the kitchen and gave each of the staff $100. The busboys got $100, too, and so did the valet guy.
We should all go see Eleta, King said, he wasn’t well. I had mixed feelings, but finally I said, “What the hell—let’s go make peace with him.” He was an old man who wasn’t going to live much longer. Why bear grudges?
The next day, we found Eleta propped up in a chair with an oxygen mask on. We posed for pictures, had a lot of laughs, but it was also bittersweet, even kind of weird, with Don King sitting on one couch and Eleta and me on another. I was happy to see them, but something felt strange. It’s still hard to explain. It wasn’t a grudge but maybe resentment. These guys had been with me through the good times, but when the bad times came, they hadn’t stuck around. It didn’t help that as we were leaving, Eleta grabbed Robin by the arm and said, “You look so much like your father when he was young. It’s unbelievable—I got flashbacks from thirt
y years ago by looking at you.” I left knowing I didn’t need to see Eleta again—there really was nothing left to say. By January of the next year, he was gone, at ninety-five.
I don’t worry about death myself; there are plenty of people to do the worrying for me. But when I went to the doctor and discovered I had a hernia, I was forced to confront the weight issue. It happens to all boxers when they retire, especially those like me who’ve struggled with their weight throughout their career. I was now over 260 pounds, the heaviest I’d ever been, and, the doctor told me, a prime candidate for a heart attack. So I decided it would be a good idea to have gastric bypass surgery to solve the problem once and for all, and I had some great friends and fans who would pick up the bill.
It was tough to go through, and took a long time to recover from, but in the end I got my weight down to 170 pounds, which I’ve managed to keep to for a few years now. If only I’d known that a gastric band would help me make weight, I’d have had one inserted while I was fighting! Now Fula takes me every year to the Punta Pacífica medical center for a full examination: head, heart—everything. “Roberto, you can still fight!” the doctor always says. “You have the heart of a twenty-five-year-old! And your brain’s fine.” That makes me very happy, as, these days, some people say that Hands of Stone is gone in the head because of boxing, which is bullshit. Maybe I was born cracked, but it’s not because I’ve been hit once too often.
These days, life is good in Panama, and that’s enough for me. I love it here. People are always asking me why I don’t do more, but I say to them: Why make your life complicated? We’ve lived in the same house for forty-one years now, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. We began to fix it up after the first Sugar Ray Leonard fight, and now it’s a three-story home with seven bedrooms, a studio, a bar, and a pool. I still have the heavy bags, along with the weight machines. Out front, I have my cars and, behind them, six big Roman statues I bought a long time ago because they reminded me of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Chavo lives in it, too, with his wife, as does one of my younger sons, Brambi. My family is still very close, and they take good care of me. Happily, my mother is still alive, at the age of ninety, and playing the lottery just like she did when I was growing up. She lives a long way away in San Miguelito, which is a bitch to get to, so I don’t see her very often, and when I do, she asks for money! Some things never change! On weekends I usually hook up with friends like Wiwa, who’s been loyal to me all these years, ever since he was one of my manzanillos. My best friend is still Chaparro, but he lives a long way away, too, and I don’t see him so much.
Most of my kids are grown now, and very independent. Irichelle and Jovanna live in Miami, and I’m fortunate that Robin’s here in Panama looking out for me—in 2010, I bought a BMW 7 Series and asked the dealership to fit neon lights underneath it and paint my face on the hood. “Dad, it’s a BMW,” said Robin. “It’s not a hot rod.” I still wish I could find a body shop to paint my face on it.
I have three other children with three other women. These things happen: I’m just a man. Once you get exposed to the level of fame I’ve reached, you’re going to have women jumping on you whether you’re married or not—crazy shit. But at the end of the day, a celebrity is just a human being. Fortunately, my wife forgave me. When you love someone, you forgive everything. Sharing the good and the bad, that’s the key to any marriage.
One of these three kids, Dalia Durán, is actually my first child. I still see her when I go to Miami. I met the mother of the second child in a nightclub in Miami; she said she was on the pill, but she got pregnant, and my son Alcibíades Durán was born. I don’t see him or his mother now—the last I heard, he was in the army. Then there was a woman in Chitré, in Panama—she also said she was on the pill, but she gave birth to my daughter Viviana Durán. She’s about twelve now, but I don’t see her much. All I do is send her mother child support payments.
Viviana’s the only child who is afraid of me. One day, she’ll find out who her father is and come looking for me so we can talk. If she wants to call me papa, okay; but if she doesn’t, I don’t need it—that’s life. Remember how I grew up. The idea of having a complex about your father? Nah—I’m not into that.
Some people may look down on the way my life’s turned out, but everyone in Panama knows my family situation, and I don’t care what people think.
Most days, I hang out at my restaurant. I recommend the food there. We have three very good soups—a hammy chickpea-and-cabbage combination, a black bean soup, and a garlic soup with a poached egg floating in the middle. One of my favorite dishes is sancocho de gallina, which is made with chicken, yuca, and mazorca (corn on the cob). Fula cooks it for me every day. Then there’s the tamal cubano—seasoned cornmeal flecked with red peppers, steamed in a corn husk. Or you can have eggs with rice, arroz con carne, or frijoles—they’re more of my favorites.
I’ll grab a beer or a whiskey and sit down and watch the tapes of my fights with customers—I love to see myself kicking Leonard’s ass again, or Barkley’s, or Davey Moore’s, and listen to people talk as though it happened yesterday. I pose for pictures with ugly old guys, young pretty girls, babies, and celebrities who’ve visited, like the singer Usher. There’s even a picture of me at a promotional event in London posing with a woman who’s holding my balls. Her friend had told her I had large balls, so she made a bet with him that I’d let her feel them. I thought she was joking, but she went and grabbed them and said, “You do have the biggest balls!”—and won her bet!
And of course I play with the salsa band. Pototo gets some of the boys together on the weekend and people come from all over to dance salsa with us. I always get up and sing a few songs—what gringos would call a “salsa riff,” with improvised lyrics.
Plata, money, is just as much of an issue for me as it’s always been. I’m happy when I’ve got some, just as happy without it—that’s my problem, which means I’m always looking out for it. I prefer cash, not checks or contracts where you get paid only now and then: money up front—that’s how it should be. I used to love it when Don King gave me those $1,000 bonuses! When I run out of money, I sometimes borrow from my friends, because I know Fula wouldn’t give me any. But I always pay them back the next day.
These days, I can make money going to the United States and the UK to sign autographs. In London especially, people are big fans and very generous. The first time I went I thought they’d be pissed off with me for beating their idol Ken Buchanan, but they adore me—I’ve seen guys with tattoos of my face! It’s too bad I never fought in the UK—I’d love to have fought for them.
Every time I visit the UK, the support is amazing. In 2014, I did an event at the Grosvenor Casino in Newcastle and people went crazy. Irichelle came with me to translate, and I loved posing for pictures with all the fans. Of course afterward we went to the bar, and I invited everyone to have a pint with me. They treat me like a star over there, and I like it that I can hang out with them, too, play pool and drink beer.
I’ve also become friends with one of England’s greats, Ricky Hatton. He’s a good boxer, but he could have gone further. When he lost to Vyacheslav Senchenko in 2012, I was at the fight. I’d told him to watch down below, and sure enough, the guy knocked him out with a body shot to the kidneys. Exactly what I’d told him—he throws a lot of lefts. But Ricky didn’t listen to me: he went in like crazy and the guy took him out with a left hook.
When it comes to business deals, I let my sons or daughter do the work, since I wouldn’t know what I was signing and would end up getting screwed. One guy got me to sign over the rights to my life story for all time. Everything—movie, books, the lot. He also wanted to open a boxing gym in Panama and share the profits with me, and was supposed to pay me $7,500 a month plus whatever they made in endorsements. But when Robin eventually read the contract, he explained that the payments of $7,500 were advances against revenue and that the
guy would take a 50 percent cut of any endorsement money, and since he hadn’t done any business yet and was already a year and a half into the deal, he claimed I owed him $300,000! We had to get an attorney to sort it all out.
Things are no different today. People I haven’t heard from in years will suddenly show up in connection with something I signed long ago without knowing what I was doing. Robin says I’m not an easy guy to steer, that I think the street smarts I got when I was young make me a sharp businessman. But they aren’t necessarily much use when you’ve got a whole lot of numbers in front of you and a contract to sign.
In 2012, Robin thought that people outside Panama needed to be reminded of who I was, and had the idea of our family doing a TV reality show. The first series was a great success: people enjoyed following me around and seeing the kind of life I lead now. The best episode was the one in which Robin surprised me with the car I’d loved most of all, the one I’d had to sell back in 1986—an Excalibur. He’d gone looking all over Panama for the very same model, even found the original car I’d had, but the guy wanted $200,000 for it. Robin went to dealerships in disguise so they wouldn’t try to rip him off, and finally found one for a good price. While I was hanging out with friends and family outside the restaurant, my son Brambi put his hands over my eyes. After a moment, I heard everyone shout, “Abre los ojos!” Open your eyes! And there it was. Robin pulled up in the car, with a big red bow on the hood. Chuleta! My sons hugged and kissed me. I got behind the wheel and we all took off.
The producers wanted to do a second series, but there were some personal issues. Robin had separated from the mother of his two children—sometimes they’d fought on camera in front of everyone in Panama. The gossip column “Chollywood” was trying to dig up some dirt, and the whole business took its toll on us as a family. The program had such great ratings that people knew more about us than we did ourselves, even felt we belonged to them. So we decided to leave it as one successful series. But people still ask for it. We’ll see.
I Am Duran Page 20