With three days to go, the New York Times reported that only about 15,000 tickets had been sold in the 80,000-seat stadium. King sold the fight package to the Hyatt for $17.5 million and held the Latin American rights with Neil Gunn from Facility Enterprises. Ringside seats ranged from $500 to $1,000 apiece, while prices for the 345 closed-circuit theaters went from $35-$50. Not only had the promotional activities got a late start but also the bout would fall on Thanksgiving weekend, a very busy time to travel. Many fans decided the trip was not worth the hassle. Also ABC had reserved the rights to show the fight thirty days after the bout, leaving some to wait for the replay. While the first Montreal fight amassed close to $30 million, the rematch remained a chilly sell.
Duran’s paternal grandmother, Clara, came to New Orleans and put a crucifix around Duran’s neck for protection the day of the fight. He would need more that that.
IT MAY BE the most notorious pre-fight meal in history. At 1 p.m. the day of the fight, having made the weight, Duran gorged. The exact combination of foods, and the amounts, would be debated for years to come. Newspapers differed on the quantities but each agreed it included a warm and cold cycle of steak and orange juice. Steak was one food that made boxers feel as strong as a bull; they could piss nails after a protein-packed meal. Duran wolfed his as though back in a Chorrillo cantina scavenging leftovers.
Angelo Dundee had been secretly delighted to see Duran gulp down a beef broth as soon as he stepped off the scale at the weigh-in, a sure sign that he had gone through hell to lose weight. According to various reports, Duran then consumed two eggs, grits, peaches, toast, an orange, two T-bone steaks, peas, French fries and fried chicken. He rounded off the meal with beef consommé, hot tea, water, Kool-Aid and four large glasses of orange juice.
“I had a steak and a baked potato,” recounted Duran. “You know, boxer’s food. I think the major problem was drinking the hot cup of tea, then the cold glass of water, plus the shots I was given to lose the weight fast. I drank a real hot cup of hot tea because I was very thirsty. But I committed an error because I then drank a real cold glass of water. That’s when the pain felt even worse. And then I started to eat too much because I was dying; I was starving. I felt very weak, and my stomach was hurting me.” The mysterious weight-losing shots were probably diuretics. “Everybody inside my dressing room, including Eleta, all knew what was wrong. But my mindset … I thought the doctor was going to give me a shot to make me strong, but he didn’t do anything.”
Plomo, Duran’s longtime trainer, could read all the angles. They had met when Duran was a child and Plomo had watched intently as the fighter gravitated from small-town hero to universal icon. “Duran was acting like a bohemian,” he said. “He would sleep all day and party all night. Duran got up to 190 and had to get back down to 147. He ate three steaks and had five glasses of orange juice. Before the fight he complained about stomach pains to me. His stomach was stretching out.”
Leonard, for the record, ate two eggs and grits, two pieces of toast, peaches and Kool-Aid for breakfast, then fried chicken, green peas, a glass of water and Kool-Aid for his pre-fight meal. Before the bout, Duran saw him jogging around the Superdome to warm up and thought he looked drawn. “I told myself that I was going to kill him,” said Duran. But suddenly he felt even worse than Leonard had looked. “I start shadowboxing in the dressing room and Plomo comes in and I tell him that my liver was starting to hurt.” His quick-fix training regime had taken its toll.
In fact when Leonard entered the ring he looked anything but weak. Wearing black trunks, shoes and socks for the first time in his professional career, he was making a statement: Now I’m the badass. “Even before the fight started and the referee was giving instructions, Duran was in La-La Land like I was the first fight,” said Leonard. “During the referee’s instructions, in the first fight I’m looking up at the screen and all around and Duran is looking at me like, ‘Man I’m going to tear you up.’ In the second fight, I’m just calm and Duran is in a whole other world. It was a different ballgame.”
“I got this feeling when Ray Charles came out to sing, it was right up Sugar Ray’s alley,” said Duran publicist Bobby Goodman. “And I got an eerie, chilly feeling because it was one of the most stirring pieces before a sporting event that I’d ever heard. I just got goosebumps when Ray did it. It set the tone for the evening.”
THE NIGHT HAD arrived. Ray Charles, after whom Leonard was named, chose to sing not the National Anthem but a highly charged rendition of “America The Beautiful.” He then hugged his namesake and whispered encouragement in his ear. “If that rendition didn’t touch, didn’t move, didn’t cause a chill along your spine,” said Howard Cosell, “I don’t suppose anything could.”
For a man who put faith in the brujos, the vibe that night in New Orleans had to concern Duran. There wasn’t that animalistic anxiety present that had Duran jumping out of his skin in Montreal; he was listless, appearing almost sedated during the now-customary staredown.
As the two boxers moved together at the opening bell, Duran held out his glove for a respectful tap. Leonard, all business, ignored him. It was a clear reversal of their expected roles. Leonard danced like a young Ali as Duran held the center of the ring. He flitted from side to side, refusing to let the Panamanian crowd him. Inside he played to his own jazz tune as he juked and jived in and out. Duran was baited and then nailed at the bell with a straight right to end the first round.
It was still early as Leonard uncoiled a right hand that stunned Duran, and sent him into a brief frenzy a minute into the second round. Duran charged and flailed at his nemesis against the ropes and walked into another Leonard right hand. Duran was landing also but the punches that stung Leonard in Montreal now lacked bite. At the round’s end, Leonard sat in his corner admiring his work. For the first time in seventeen rounds against Duran, he looked content.
If Duran’s mind seemed elsewhere, he wasn’t hurt. He even managed to control the tempo and win the third with a late two-punch flurry to make up for a left hook that jarred him. But the more Ray Arcel cajoled his fighter to “be the boss,” the less he complied. Neither fighter was throwing much leather as the challenger stuck to his safety-first plan of lateral movement and Duran seemed content to stalk – or plod – rather than charge. Leonard found openings for his uppercut to take the fourth, but in the fifth Duran continued to press, slipped punches and pinned Leonard for the first time. Both men had their moments, with Duran landing a clean left-right combination in a round that he won.
Leonard continued to move laterally at speed, and landed a left-right that shook Duran in the sixth round. Looking frustrated, Duran could only stand in the middle of the ring and follow, his jab now harmless.
The climax of Leonard’s strategy came in the seventh round. After continuing to dance for the first minute or so, the Sugar Show began halfway through the round. He teed off on a flailing Duran with a startlingly fast five-punch combination while his back was to the ropes, and nearly repeated the same machine-gun flurry seconds later. He then came down onto his heels and went into an extraordinary exhibition. Leonard stuck his face out, baited Duran with an ‘Ali shuffle’, shrugged his shoulders like a body-popper and made Duran miss twelve punches in a row. As a display of public mockery it was both embarrassing and wondrous to watch, but not everyone was enamored. Even Howard Cosell, a big Sugar Ray booster, commented: “Leonard is showing his confidence but he is doing it in the wrong way.”
With twenty-five seconds left in the round, Leonard stood in the middle of the ring and playfully wound up his right hand. Duran went for him with a jab, but Leonard then beat him to the punch with a snapping left. Spectators gasped. That audacious punch would become a metaphor for the whole fight. At the bell, Duran angrily and dismissively waved his glove at Leonard. Had he already given up?
It was the most significant round in both men’s lives to that point.
Heading into the eighth, the judges had Leonard winning by gaps of only
one or two points. Judge James Brimmel of Wales had it 67-66, while Britain’s Mike Jacobs and Belgium’s Jean Deswert scored it 68-66. The rounds were 4-2-1 twice and 4-3. It wasn’t unusual for there to be disparity between the media and the officials, but Brimmel’s score seemed way off the mark to most reporters. Leonard was fighting his fight, while Duran couldn’t seem to get untracked.
Leonard performed his masterclass on top of a bum canvas, complaining and pointing from the first round on about a soft spot in the ring. Supporting bolts underneath the canvas had snapped, causing it to drop a few inches. “Rather than stop the fight at that point, I told all the guards from local colleges underneath to hold the ring,” said Goodman. “It just seemed that night that everything went wrong.”
For the first half of round eight, Leonard barely threw a punch as he moved around the ring, sneaking the odd single shot past Duran’s guard. A spectator entering the arena at that point would have been unable to tell who was winning – neither was marked, neither was hurt and neither seemed dominant. But Duran seemed to have lost interest completely.
Leonard continued to sneak in punches, a left and short right to Duran’s jaw. Seconds before the stoppage a befuddled Duran speared Leonard into the ropes with his head. With thirty seconds left Duran pawed at Leonard. Despite not taking much punishment, Duran put up his right fist to signal enough. Leonard saw Duran’s guard down and hit him with a two-punch combination to the body that didn’t seem to affect Duran before referee Octavio Meyran stepped between them. Duran turned his back on them both.
The bemused referee urged him to continue.
“Pelea, pelea.” Box, box.
Duran walked away and raised and waved his glove again, a sign of surrender. He then looked back towards Leonard, who had moved away to the other side of the ring, and gestured towards him as if simulating masturbation. Leonard, unable to understand Spanish and suspecting a trick to lure him in, came over with his fists up, ready to continue. With twenty-three seconds left in the round, Meyran made a karate-chopping motion to urge the fighters to come together and resume. Instead he received another shake of the right fist from Duran.
“No quiero pelear con el payaso,” said Duran. I do not want to fight with this clown. According to Meyran, Duran also said in broken English, “I don’t box anymore.”
“When I asked why,” the referee said later, “Duran said, ‘No más, no más.’”
Then Leonard heard his brother, Roger, yelling, “He quit on you Ray. He quit.” Leonard ran and jumped on a ringpost and applauded himself. Roger stormed into the ring and went to punch Duran in the face; the fighter put his fists up and stepped back.
As Duran’s cornermen climbed onto the ring apron, Hands of Stone trudged toward them. The venerable Arcel and Brown, men who had seen everything, were as stunned as the thousands of Panamanians who had bet their paychecks on Duran. “I almost fainted,” Arcel told Ring magazine. “I thought maybe he broke his arm or something. I don’t have the vocabulary to explain it. All I know is I’m quitting boxing. After sixty-three years, and now this? I’ve had enough. I have never seen anything like this. A big fight like this, and all the money.”
Somewhere Duran’s mother, Clara Samaniego, lit a candle and prayed for her son. No one was listening anymore.
OUTSIDE THE RING, confusion reigned. “We didn’t know what happened,” said ringside reporter Bert Sugar. “The referee didn’t know what was happening. It didn’t calibrate. They said he was quitting and someone next to me said, ‘Bullshit.’ I didn’t hear ‘no más’ but I saw him go like that [wave his glove]. Leonard hit him with a bodacious uppercut to the body and he didn’t blink. And they’re going to tell me it’s stomach pains? He wasn’t even looking at Leonard.”
Steve Farhood was sitting a few seats away from Bert Sugar. “The New York Times business bureau had a function for the fortieth anniversary of JFK’s death. They had great guests who were all in Dallas the day of Kennedy’s death. One of them was talking about how he never [before] saw a rumor literally move through a room,” said Farhood. “And you don’t know what the rumor is, but you can see it turning. It was the same in New Orleans, except we saw it actually happen but we didn’t believe it happened. I remember a head turning to me and saying something and me turning my head to the right to tell someone else. And we were all looking for confirmation that we just saw what we saw.”
The simple, awful truth was that Duran had broken the unwritten contract he made the day he stepped in the boxing ring: To punch till the end. There was no need for translation, he had surrendered, demolishing the Latin notion of valor that he had helped build. Speculation raged as everyone in the arena searched for an explanation. Some were already starting to call Duran a coward, a fake, a phony.
One person had a closer view than anyone else. “He was in total frustration,” said Ray Leonard. “It was like going to work and you can’t get your car started. Then there’s traffic and it’s like, what do I do now?”
As Duran sat with his handlers and answered questions about the stoppage, his eyes drooped, but veteran TV broadcaster Howard Cosell let him down easy, unwilling to apply the knockout punch. Duran immediately retired, “No peleo más,” and told Cosell that he would never fight again. Even at that point, too many pieces didn’t fit. Duran didn’t have any clue as to how the boxing world, his people, the fans who snuck into training sessions to see him, would react. Draped in superficial manzanillo flattery, the people who claimed to be his true friends had already vanished. “I think when he quit, he didn’t realize the repercussions it would have on the world, his legacy,” Leonard said.
Cosell, however, had already been instrumental in creating the central myth of the fight, with two words that will dog Duran for the rest of his life. The words had come out of Duran’s mouth as, “I will not fight with this clown anymore.” While broadcasting the fight, Cosell picked up only on the words “no más” and the phrase would live in sporting infamy. Referee Meyran also said he heard those two fateful words.
Carlos Eleta, however, insists they were never spoken. “I was right there and he never said no más,” said Eleta. “Leonard was dancing around and making fun of him, mocking him. No, he just said he wasn’t going to fight with this clown anymore. Leonard was circling in and trying to tire him because he knew Duran wasn’t in good shape. Then Duran got mad and said, ‘He’s running, I’m not fighting with this clown.’ I ran up to the ring and said, ‘You have to fight.’ It was too late.”
Others ringsiders tried to reason with the seeming aberration.
“I was right there sitting with Eleta. Eleta kept a score of the fight on a yellow piece of paper,” said Hall-of-Fame boxing historian Hank Kaplan. “We were both completely shocked. He didn’t say anything to me. He just jumped up to the ring. I couldn’t figure out why he turned his back. But I know he was in lousy shape and he depended on voodoo. He hired witchdoctors and he would bring chickens up to his room and slit their throats in the bathtub. You know that santeria stuff. He hired some guys from Latin America to do voodoo. He didn’t train and when he did it was just to amuse his followers. He was disrespectful to Freddie Brown and only concerned with making his friends laugh. He thought he was invincible.”
Payaso, or clown, was the Spanish word that Duran used to describe any opponent who refused to mix it with him. Duran curses in a cool Spanish argot that makes words like maricon and puta slither off his tongue: Maaa-rrr—eeee-cahone. Even watching a replay of the fight twenty years later in his home, the word buzzed off his lips. He would claim that Leonard didn’t want to fight and he didn’t want to chase him. It was hardly a good enough reason to quit in one of the biggest fights of all time, at least not on its own.
It was later reported that Duran had told Plomo in Spanish about stomach pains around the fifth round, the suggestion being that the message wasn’t passed on to Arcel. It was an unlikely story that Duran would refute. They had never had much trouble with the language barrier in the cor
ner. “I didn’t say anything to my cornermen,” said Duran. “When I stopped the fight, Eleta jumps up into the ring and says, ‘Cholo, what happened?’ I tell him that ‘my stomach hurts, man. I got a pain right here, I feel really bad, I can’t continue.’ I told Eleta to just give me the rematch and I’ll train better. I could have finished that round and not come out to fight. But I didn’t want that, I wanted to end it right there. I couldn’t move anymore. Every time I moved it was really difficult to breathe and I felt really weak.”
It was apparently Freddie Brown who made up a story about stomach cramps. “He said he had a stomach ache,” Brown told reporters. “I said, ‘So what, youse get over it, get out and fight.’”
Said Leonard, “You couldn’t fathom any fighter quitting, but Duran? No, how could you imagine that? That’s a sensationalized dream. Duran quitting, no way.” Leonard had made the bravest of men walk away. Before their first fight, he had promised to “upset Duran with my tactics; he’s very temperamental. I’m going to drive him crazy.” In their second fight, he made good.
Did the controversial ending detract from Leonard’s superb performance? “No, it didn’t,” said Angelo Dundee. “They say he quit, but Duran was being knocked out by Leonard. He was this macho man. He couldn’t take being kayoed. Ray was hitting him with tremendous shots to the body. You don’t take those types of shots and survive. And I resent that people say that Duran was a quitter. Ray changed and Roberto couldn’t cope with it. He was so much better this time around. Ray wanted it so bad he could taste it.”
Not everyone, however, admired Leonard’s antics. Thomas Hearns, sitting ringside, said how disappointed he was to see Leonard resort to taunting. And the formidable Iran Barkley would later say, “One thing I have to say about Duran is that when he went to fight, Leonard wouldn’t fight him. And Duran always said Leonard was a faggot or puta in Spanish cause he wouldn’t fight.”
Hands of Stone Page 25