Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  Through the shouting of the largely pro-DeJesus crowd, Duran’s mother Clara, a rare sight at ringside, could be heard shrieking, “Throw the hook to the liver!” But the champion continued to get picked off. DeJesus stayed in a crouch and sprung from his toes with every punch as Duran pawed, frustrated at his impotence. Ringside broadcasters speculated that the champion’s lackluster performance might have something to do with him being five pounds heavier than for Buchanan.

  With the bout slipping away, Duran was active enough to win round five, dancing, picking his angles and landing a solid uppercut, but it was a shortlived rally. An energized DeJesus danced in the sixth and seventh, overcame a low blow and jolted back Duran’s head with two left hooks, a punch he couldn’t miss with. Pawing at air with his little-used jab as a range-finder in the eighth round, Duran finally connected with some quality right hands that DeJesus would quickly shake off. In desperation, Duran landed punches after the bell, his blood boiling at the prospect of a loss. He would not get another opening.

  The voice of Luis Henriquez could be heard between rounds urging Duran to come alive. It was too late. Although Duran was energized in the ninth round, he lost his way in the tenth, fruitlessly chasing his elusive opponent. To drive home his supremacy, DeJesus nailed Duran with a final clean hook. Even while Duran’s handlers took off his gloves, he pawed at DeJesus with his right hand. Reluctantly he then shook his opponent’s hand.

  In the non-title affair, judges Harold Lederman had it 6-3-1, Bill Recht 6-2-2 and Arthur Mercante 5-4-1, all to DeJesus. The Puerto Rican from the Town of the Arm Hackers jumped up and down in his corner with his hands to the sky. Few in the 9,144 crowd could argue that Duran deserved his first defeat in thirty-two pro outings.

  The Panamanian media, already developing a love-hate relationship with Duran, quickly picked up on stories that he had been enjoying the nightclub scene a little too exuberantly. On November 21, reporter Macume Argote wrote a piece entitled, “Duran needs to learn how to box.” Another local reporter, Tomy Cupas, added, “Duran had his mind on other things in Madison Square Garden.” It had been noted in the Panamanian press that “before the trip the Duran camp denied the rumors of the little Hercules having relations with certain lunatics that he had been seen with on the isthmus.”

  If former world champ Jose Torres was right in his assessment that all fighters know when they have not done enough conditioning, then Duran couldn’t fool himself. He left the ring in his shiny green robe and took out his frustration on the bathroom walls of his hotel. His bloodied hands reminded him of his dispassionate performance.

  “After that fight, we went with Ray Arcel to a restaurant and Duran was crying,” said Eleta. “I told him that you don’t win the fight in the ring, but in training. I said, ‘Always remember that. Never forget that I say this.’ He wanted the rematch immediately, but I postponed that fight … so that he would get out of this feeling. I wait until he is ready and then I tell him that he would fight DeJesus again.”

  Two and a half weeks later, Ken Buchanan stopped Oriental junior welterweight champion Chang Kil Lee in less than two rounds and then took a blast at Duran. “He’s doing everything he can think of to get away from me,” said the embittered Scot. “If he beat me as easily as he claimed, why is he waiting so long to give me a return?”

  Despite the defeat, and his continued avoidance of Buchanan, in November 1972 the British trade magazine Boxing News, which had the most reliable ratings in the sport, rated Duran as the true champion of the division, and listed the top ten contenders:

  1. Rodolfo Gonzalez (US), WBC champion

  2. Ken Buchanan (Britain)

  3. Esteban DeJesus (Puerto Rico)

  4. Chango Carmona (Mexico)

  5. Mando Ramos (US)

  6. Pedro Carrasco (Spain)

  7. Ruben Navarro (US)

  8. Antonio Puddu (Italy)

  9. Javier Ayala (US)

  10. Jimmy Robertson (US)

  Two months later, the World Boxing Council dropped Panamanian boxers from its rankings following a dispute with the Panamanian Boxing Commission. The commission had broken off relations after WBC President Ramon Velasquez stripped Enrique Pinder of his bantamweight title for refusing to fight the top contender, a Mexican. Bizarrely, according to Velazquez the Panamanian Commission had never been a member of the WBC anyway. It forced the Panamanians to side decisively with the rival WBA, something that would have far-reaching consequences for world boxing.

  8

  Revenge

  “Ads, commercials and, indeed, all the media itself, are dedicated to identifying – and hyping – male machismo. So much so that boxing crowds in Latin countries immediately boo if a defensive fighter is successful in preventing his opponent from connecting solidly while not doing much himself in return … There is not much fun in winning unless you can show evidence of machismo.”

  Jose Torres, The Ring, May 1981.

  IT WAS THE middle of the day in Panama in January 1973 and Roberto Duran was walking around with a gun sticking out of his jeans. It was not an accessory he needed, but it certainly enhanced his bad-ass persona. If the promise of his fists wasn’t intimidating enough, the shine of a pistol indicated in simple terms the man’s invincibility. In a couple days, he was due to defend his title for the first time against Jimmy Robertson, who was white, durable and willing. Robertson, from Los Angeles, reportedly wasn’t keen on the fight, but couldn’t turn down a title shot.

  Robertson had come over with the LA-based promoter Don Chargin, and neither of them were under any illusions. “Then, that guy was hard as a rock,” Chargin said of Duran. “He’d wear Levis and a tight, tight T-shirt. The first time I saw him he was at a hotel talking to people by a pool. He would walk around with a gun in his waistband. Nobody would do anything to Duran and he could get by doing anything.”

  A few years earlier, Chargin had taken a phone call from his friend Andy Russell, a Latino singer out of LA. Russell was in Panama and had seen Duran fight. “He said, ‘You won’t believe this kid. You’ve got to come see this kid.’ So I wrote the name down, but I just never got a chance to get down there and I missed out.”

  Robertson went into the bout with a reasonable 24-6-1 record, though he had lost three of his previous four fights. Duran, meanwhile, had been complaining about having to train over the Christmas season. On January 20, 1973, they climbed into the ring at the Nuevo Panama Gymnasium. “We knew [Jimmy] wanted a chance and he knew how tough it would be,” said Chargin. “Duran destroyed him. In fact, he knocked out three [recorded as two] of his teeth in the first round. He took a beating and earned every cent.”

  Robertson went four more rounds minus his teeth. In the third, he was drawn into a perfect overhand right that left him on one knee, although he gamely bounced back up and managed to survive the follow-up onslaught. Duran would comment on his opponent’s bravery after the fight. In Spanish, a fighter of Robertson’s mold is referred to as bastante duro or very tough. And in the fourth round, as Robertson was bounced along the ropes by triple right hands, it was clear that he deserved the compliment and had earned respect from the partisan crowd. Unfortunately that meant nothing in the middle of the ring.

  Robertson rolled along the ropes during the fifth, his body movement disappeared and his face left wide open for a right and left hook. Without warning, his legs gave way like a fast-collapsing table. The young fighter had met another straight right hand. Now, he was on the canvas leaning on his right hand, trying to decide what his next move would be.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six …”

  Robertson could hear the count clearly and he would redirect his body weight so he was now on one knee.

  “… seven, eight, nine, ten!”

  After surveying the scene, Robertson understood the gap between possible gain and permanent injury and elected to fight another day.

  The clean-shaven Duran laughed with reporters after the fight, acknowledged that Robertson had the
edge in the second round and that he was “feeling weak.” Meanwhile a Panamanian journalist practicing his English had wandered over to speak to the loser.

  “Jimmy, I am very, very, sorry that you lost the fight. You did a good fight.”

  “Thank you,” said the beaten fighter.

  “What is your opinion about Duran? He punch too hard?”

  “Yes, he is very strong and hard to fight.”

  “Duran said you got him in the second round and that he felt weak, did you notice this?” asked the reporter.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you lose teeth, tooth?”

  “One tooth.”

  “OK, Jimmy I am very sorry that you lost today,” said the reporter.

  Robertson trudged back to the dressing room.

  “Now, bring me to Esteban DeJesus,” said the champion. Toti remembers that his brother began to be called “El Dentista” for his power punching.

  THE WBC LIGHTWEIGHT champion, Rodolfo “Gato” Gonzalez, was based on the West Coast, where he was popular among the large Mexican community. With his champion banned from New York, Eleta decided to establish him in California too, and Duran’s next two bouts took place in Los Angeles.

  First, he stopped southpaw Juan Medina in seven rounds on February 23, 1973, in a non-title fight. For Medina “just going the distance would be a victory,” recalled promoter Don Chargin from ringside, and he tried all he could to stay away from his pursuer, but eventually Duran caught up and stopped him in the seventh round. Finding his opponent in the ring strictly to survive was something Duran would have to get used to.

  The West Coast trip was more important to Duran for events outside the ring. “I went to train in the Olympic Auditorium with Luis Spada behind the Hotel Alejandria,” he said. “I was twenty-one at the time and waiting to fight Medina. Three people came to me and said that I had the same face as Margarito [his father]. They were my aunts and uncles. They said my father was coming to see me and that’s also when I met my uncle, Roberto, whose name was given to me because my father loved him so much. I went to the hotel and after a couple of hours my father came to see me. I knew it was him after he told me who he knew in my town in Panama.”

  Margarito had failed for two decades to even ask about him, and had never even sent money. Suspicious and resentful of his father’s timing, Roberto saw someone looking for a handout. “He is a very sensitive person and would always complain about not having lived with his father,” said Plomo. “He used to tell me he wanted to find out about him, to know what he was like, and I remember he once said he had left Germany and was living in Arizona. At that time he had already fought in the USA, and had turned world champion, but he still did not know who his father was. We had two fights in Los Angeles, after being world champion, and he repeated the story about his father being a Mexican, and his wish to know whether he was then living in Arizona or not. This interview was broadcast by radio and TV, and in the end, his father did come one day to our hotel in Los Angeles.

  “Roberto got very angry, and asked him why was it that he was only now interested in meeting him, now that he was a champion. He added he could not be sure he was really his father. After asking what his name was, to which his father said, ‘Margarito,’ he inquired about the other people in the family he knew. Margarito answered he knew Uncle Joaquin, with whom he used to spend long hours. I told him not get angry at his father, after all he was his father.

  “Roberto left the room for a while, and upon returning he went on with the questions. He asked whether he knew who his grandfather was, to which Margarito answered his grandfather’s name was Chavelo. They looked at each other for a while, after which they embraced strongly, and when they finally looked at each other again, they heard the words they had longed for so long: Father, Son. That was the beginning of a totally new friendship.”

  Margarito wasn’t after anything except to see his son. “The reason I got in contact with Roberto was because I was in California and I was reading a boxing magazine,” he said. “At the time I was visiting my oldest brother. Then I see Roberto Duran in the magazine. I told my oldest brother that he had to be my son. ‘I bet it is my son,’ I told my brother. Soon enough I saw him when he came here to fight.”

  Despite the reconciliation, they rarely kept in touch afterwards. Duran would face Javier Ayala less than a month later. Duran weighed 140 for Ayala, and went in at 139 for Medina. “There was a belief that Duran struggled to make weight for some of his fights,” said West Coast promoter Don Chargin. “Of course, the fighters don’t always let you know if they did have trouble. Duran was very popular with all the Latin fans. His father was Mexican. He would mix around with everybody around the gym and that’s what Latin fans liked. You know, he might have been wild in Panama, but when he came to Los Angeles he was always on time at all the press events and was always good with the press.”

  Ayala proved to be a testing opponent. He came in with a poor 13-7-1 record but was able to fend off Duran; Chargin recalled that Duran made “Ayala fight the best fight of his life.” During the bout, at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on March 17, Duran knocked Ayala down in the last round but a bizarre occurrence meant he couldn’t finish him off, and left him feeling short-changed by promoter Chargin and the locals. “There was quite a bit of time left, maybe a couple minutes in the round,” said Chargin. “Duran knocked Ayala down and his head hit the bell. Back then the bell was a box with a button on it. So everybody stopped because of the confusion. Ayala was hurt, but he cleared and was able to finish the fight. We had a tough time with Duran after because he thought it was something we did on purpose. It took us a week before he finally understood what had happened.”

  Before he left the West Coast, Duran spent some more time getting to know Margarito’s side of the family. “We went to my father’s house and we were drinking beer,” said Duran. “They gave us food, but we didn’t eat it because it was too spicy. I only saw my father maybe four times during my boxing career. Twenty-one years had passed after that first time. I always called him, but only his woman answered. He never did and never returned my calls.”

  Margarito countered, “I used to see him every time he used to fight. They’d call us beforehand and reserve our seats.”

  Although people give sundry testimonies on the person Duran really was, from a hard drinker who would enter New York bars and call out the toughest guy, to a party lover, to a legendary womanizer, the people who dealt with him inside boxing painted the same portrait of a maniacal figure. Was he acting out against his father each time he entered the ring?

  “It wasn’t an act. He used to be a mean little guy when he was younger,” said Kronk trainer Emanuel Steward. “But that’s what made him who he was, that rage. You couldn’t take that away from him. But he mellowed with age. He’s such a nice guy and you can just see that in his body language, he just likes to be around people.”

  The rage hid sensitivity. Duran put up walls that only a select few could get beyond. One of the barriers was a refusal to learn English. The belief was that he didn’t want people to misinterpret him. Ironically, the situations in his life that left him damaged were also the easiest to talk about. Duran doesn’t clam up about his feelings for his father and refuses to hide his feeling of abandonment. Yet he never received a satisfactory answer for why his father didn’t love him enough to look after him, and they would never become close.

  “One night I was done fighting once and we all went to have drinks at Caesar’s Palace,” said Duran. “My dad was drunk and he started dancing. He fell! So he has to go to the room, but I had no clothes so I gave him my boxing robe. Later on, when he wouldn’t call back, I thought that he didn’t want to talk to me or maybe his wife talked to him so that he didn’t contact me. But I don’t want to know anything about that family anymore.”

  After the Ayala fight, Duran knocked out Gerardo Ferrat on April 14 in Panama City in another over-the-weight match. Ferrat, another Mexican, had fou
ght the best in the division but spent a sizeable part of the fight looking into the referee’s eyes, as he was dropped three times before succumbing to a straight right hand in the final moments of the second round. “Ferrat came out with the determination of swapping punches, and Rocky didn’t hesitate in answering the call,” described Ring magazine succinctly.

  Next came a true test. Duran’s second title defense was against Australian aborigine Hector Thompson, who had never boxed outside his native country but who was unbeaten in his last twenty-six contests. “Hector was a legend in Australia,” said Eleta. “They didn’t believe that anyone could beat him. Supposedly, he killed a man in the ring or something like that. The guy was a killer.” In 1970, Rocco Spanja had died in hospital after losing to Thompson.

  Born in Kempsey, a river settlement on the Pacific coast midway between Sydney and Brisbane, Thompson was raised in a boys’ home after the death of his mother. He was introduced to boxing there at just five years of age, and developed into a skilled and very strong fighter who could box, stay poised in heated exchanges and was adept at beating opponents to the jab. An Australian champion at two weights, he had just won the Commonwealth light-welterweight title and had lost only twice, both early in his career, in forty-three pro bouts.

  The bout was held in Nuevo Panama on 2 June 1973. Duran came in at 134 pounds, a pound less than Thompson, who often fought at the slightly heavier light-welterweight. At the weigh-in Duran had predicted a knockout within five rounds but it was soon clear that the rugged Australian was both strong and smart and would be no pushover. Duran stung him with a right to the ribs and an overhand right to let him know whose turf he was on.