Although Clara Samaniego believed in the power of sorcerers and witches and would blame them for cursing her son when he lost, Duran claimed to be a Catholic who put his faith in the saints Virgin del Carmen and Saint Lazarus. However, he also believed in a Babalu aye, a santeria (the Afro-Cuban faith with roots in the Yoruba region of Nigeria) god of health and healing who concerns himself with the poor. Identified with St Lazarus, Babalu is also the wrath of the earth and will punish those that disrespect it. Duran would call upon these mystical sources for strength against Moore.
The brash young fighter referred to Duran as over the hill, and predicted a first-round knockout the day before the fight. Duran told a Boston Globe reporter that he was beginning a “new stage” in the career.
The numbers from the fight proved astounding. Moore-Duran fight brought the biggest crowd – 20,061, of which 19,000 were paid admissions – since Ali-Frazier II in 1974. Duran was on a $100,000 purse, with the possibility of $500,000 in incentives, while Moore was guaranteed $300,000.
More than 20,000 packed the Garden that June evening. Coming in to the fight, Duran was a 2-1 underdog. Boxing experts such as Michael Katz, Shelly Finkel and Jim Jacobs all sided with Moore. In fact, very few thought Duran would win. Although Moore was a Bronx native, the momentum shifted as the majority of the fans flocked to see their own Latin legend. “This is my town, my city, I’m the all-American, and everybody was for Duran,” Moore would complain later. “Everybody was Panamanian.” Not quite everyone, however. Before Duran stole the spotlight, another icon stole his thunder. “All of a sudden Muhammad Ali walks into the building and you hear nineteen thousand people start chanting his name,” said Steve Farhood. “And remember he’s only three years removed from boxing.”
During referee Ernesto Magana’s pre-fight instructions, Moore took the notion of staredown literally as he tucked his head in his powerful chest and thought about the coming battle. With Moore’s chin on chest and Duran swiveling his head like a speed bag, Magana addressed both fighters as a son would his children. Duran looked over at Moore’s bowed head with a glare. Moore was a kid who could be great, but Cholo had been there already.
The first minute saw barely a punch landed as the combatants circled the ring. The key moment came just before the bell. Duran threw a jab and seemed to thumb Moore in the right eye at the same time. Moore lifted his glove to the eye and pawed at it, a giveaway that he was hurt. The move was more than a distraction, but was emblematic of the ensuing violence, as Moore was in with an opponent for whom rules meant little.
The injured eye was already closing when Moore came out for the second. For the next two rounds Duran, the veteran, embarked on a controlled but brutal assault, his hooks pounding the champion’s ribs, his jabs finding that damaged eye. Moore fired back, but at ringside Ray Leonard noted that Duran was “going with” the punches, rolling his head to mitigate their impact.
Duran poured it on, insulting Moore in the clinches, slipping his counters, jerking his head back with uppercuts, splitting his bottom lip. Moore had never been privy to such savagery, and had no idea how to cope. He started at Moore’s chest, then led to his head, confusing the younger man. “Is he hurting you?” Moore’s worried trainer asked between rounds. “Are you all right?” Moore didn’t need to answer: the shock and pain was written on his bruised face. In round five, the challenger landed two crunching rights, then was warned for a low blow. He showed no mercy, never did. By round six, Moore’s eye was closed so tightly that his corner no longer worked on it. With Moore blind in one eye, Duran was now picking his shots, while the champion tried to work inside where his lack of vision was less of a hindrance.
In the seventh round, it became massacre. Moore was still throwing punches but Duran’s short left hooks found his jaw with sickening repetition. After one short flurry from Moore, Duran gave him a classic shit-eating grin. Puss and sweat flew off Moore’s right eye. Ringsiders cringed or hid their eyes behind fingers. Moore’s girlfriend and mother passed out. Journalist and Athletic Commission boxing representative Jose Torres, who had seen men die in the ring, was on his feet screaming, “Stop the fight, stop the fight.”
The massacre hit its hideous peak as Duran finally threw a straight right off a hook and Moore was blown off his feet and hurled to the canvas near the ropes. Nobody would have objected to stopping the fight as a brave Moore pushed himself up on his feet. There was little left in the fighter, but heroically he rose to his feet at the count of eight and was saved by the bell. Duran was so pumped that he sat down on Moore’s stool before Plomo rushed in and grabbed him. As he crossed Moore’s path, he cocked his right glove menacingly. Despite his destructive path and Moore’s unyielding spirit, Duran had never bludgeoned an opponent so convincingly. Every emotion from confusion to sorrow to complete exasperation formed on Moore’s face.
Bumps contoured Moore’s face, yet for some reason the normally competent Magana let the slaughter continue. He seemed to be the only person in the Garden happy for the bout to go on. “Davey Moore was terribly beaten,” remembered Bert Sugar. “The generic ringside writers thought that Duran had stuck a thumb in his eye, myself not included, because his eye had ballooned. He was getting the shit kicked out of him. That was Duran at his greatest because he was through, or at least that was the thinking.”
The referee visited Moore’s corner but still the bout continued. Round eight was torture. Moore tried to hold on, but was trapped in his corner and terribly beaten, Duran’s thumping right landing again and again. A white towel fluttered into the ring, thrown by Moore’s corner, but Magana didn’t see it, and ignored screams from ringside for it to be stopped. Only when Duran’s handlers rushed between the ropes did Magana finally spot the towel and halt the round at 2:02.
Leon Washington, Moore’s trainer, would later claim in an interview that, “The only reason [Davey] wasn’t defending himself was that he couldn’t see.” Washington’s logic was based on the absurdity that he had no problem allowing a blind fighter back into the ring with a butcher. “Watching that fight, we knew we were watching the end of Davey Moore,” said Steve Farhood. “Duran was Duran and took this guy apart,” added Gil Clancy. “He did a complete job on him.”
Jumping up so that his body would hang over the top rope, Duran searched the crowd through tears of joy. More than twenty thousand fans lifted the Garden roof with a chant of “Doo-ran, Doo-ran” as the fighter, with tears rolling down his bearded cheeks, stepped through the ropes onto the ring apron and extended his arms, chanting with them, “the satanic eyes suddenly so human and weak.” Someone held him around the waist to stop him falling into the press section as the fans in the $100 ringside seats strained to touch him. In the cheaper seats, his fans waved banners declaring, “Feliz Cumpleanos, Manos de Piedra” – “Happy Birthday, Hands of Stone” and began to sing “Happy Birthday.” Soon the song was taken up by the whole stadium. “It was an amazing moment,” said Farhood. “It was like you were watching a rebirth.” Even Sugar Ray Leonard, looking on from ringside as a CBS commentator, climbed into the ring and held Duran’s arm aloft. The new champion thanked him, then added in English, “Say hello to your wife and your son.” Old enmities were blown away in the tide of emotion.
In eight rounds of action, Duran almost knocked the life out of Davey Moore. He also became the seventh fighter in history to win titles in three weight classes, joining the elite fraternity of Bob Fitzsimmons, Tony Canzoneri, Henry Armstrong, Barney Ross, Alexis Arguello and Wilfred Benitez. He cracked open a bottle of Moet and Chandon champagne in his hotel room to celebrate.
Duran had fulfilled the promise he made in the fall of 1982 to win a title in Torrijos’s honor. “I can’t find words to express how I failed in the past,” said Duran after the fight. “There are no excuses. Once I thought I was a man; now I am a man and I know it. In truth, I have such enthusiasm, like it was the first time I came to New York.”
“When everybody was thinking I am finished, I am w
orld champion again,” said Duran the next day, after partying into the early hours. “After last night, I forget what happened in the past. I think only in the present and the future. I was born again last night.”
THOSE PEOPLE WHO had lined up to disparage Duran after Leonard II now crowded the same streets to share in his return to glory. Duran eventually returned to Panama after making a pit stop in Miami. As Duran exited the plane that was sent to him by President Richard de la Espriella, he cut a glorious figure in his white designer suit and hat. Thousands braved the rain to honor their hero; schoolchildren threw flowers; men tipped their glasses; and Duran was presented a key to the city. The rapturous victory parade traveled along the 10-mile route from the airport to the executive mansion.
To Duran, they were all hypocrites as he would remember the familiar faces that he hadn’t seen in years. “When Duran was fighting and the fight was on TV, his fight had the greatest rating, everybody’s watching all over Panama,” said Spada. “When we came back from Moore fight, they send Duran in Miami in the President’s own plane. They brought us here to Paitilla, there was thousands of fans waiting for him. We went to the president’s house and Duran is one man who has made more Panamanians happy than anybody else. We will have other champions, but not like Roberto.”
There was a reunion of sorts in Panama. There had been lingering rumors that Eleta had stolen money from Duran. “Time passes on and I go to eat at a restaurant where I was going to have a press conference. What a coincidence, when the conference is over, politics begins,” said Duran. “One of the waiters tells me that Eleta is in the other room. In my mind, this bastard is in here. I go to where he is and I say, ‘How are you Eleta? Champion of the world, did you see this?’ He’s with a friend and you could see the tears in his eyes. His friend tells me that he needs me for political reasons. I don’t care about politics or Carlos Eleta. I’m the new champion and you doubted me. And I left.”
Eleta refuted the charge on many occasions. “All those people say what they want and Duran would believe them,” he said. “I never took anything from him. He was a man so worried about what the people around him said and thought of him.”
Although the common belief in Panama is that Eleta did skim from Duran’s purses, there were those who sided with Eleta.
“When I found out that Eleta took fifty grand from me, I made a big commotion about it,” Duran said. “Before I make the story any longer, he paid my money back piece by piece. He wanted me to sign a piece of paper that said I didn’t owe him anything else and everything was settled. It wasn’t Eleta himself, he sent a lawyer to sign the thing. My father-in-law tells the lawyer, ‘No, Duran can’t sign that paper because we don’t know if Eleta still owes him any more money.’ At some point he screws me out of my money but I can’t elaborate on a lot of the specifics.”
“I’ve heard all of the stories,” said LA-based promoter Don Chargin. “At the time I met Roberto he was young, and they change. They’re willing to do anything. I remember how close he and Eleta were. So I was really surprised at the break-up.”
Chargin saw firsthand how money destroyed many relationships. Having been close to several fighters throughout his career, he also had been privy to the combustibility of dealing with high-strung, spontaneous personalities like Duran. Often, with Don King as its pioneer, the sport dictated that promoters receive a bad rap and boxers always are the victims.
“After Leonard, [Duran] was the boss,” recalled Chargin. “It was pretty hard back then. Nobody could tell him what to do. I think he hurt himself. You always have to be careful because fighters blame people … they say, ‘It was my manager.’ The real good managers look out for the fighter’s welfare all the time.”
After the win over Moore, Eleta was a stranger to Duran, who must have felt a twinge of sadness watching another male figure check out of his life. First his real father left, then Chaflan and father figure Jose Manuel Gomez died, now the man who Duran once called Papa had turned on him. Or that’s how Duran perceived it. Consolation came from the adulation of his supporters. “An outpouring of acceptance and appreciation of Duran was never at a higher pitch,” said Sugar. “He wasn’t supposed to beat Davey Moore and yet all of a sudden 19,000 people were chasing the pigeons out of the Garden to see him; they didn’t come to see Davey Moore.”
Meanwhile the inquest continued over referee Magana’s belated stoppage of the bout. Watching Moore drown at the Garden, it had been obvious that boxing was the one sport where a bad night could pluck years off a fighter’s shelf life. Moore’s armor was peeled off piece by piece. In nearly twenty-four boxing minutes, Davey Moore was stripped of the exuberant, cocksure nature. Those who witnessed the bout tried to make sense of it all.
“And then when they threw the towel, he stops the fight,” said Juan Carlos Tapia. “It was one of the most cowardly moments ever by a referee. He could have done a great loss to Davey Moore.” Writer Jack Newfield referred to Magana as a “voyeur of masochism” and noted that it was like “death entering the arena.”
“I watched it with dread,” said author Budd Schulberg. “There are nights like that that make you feel guilty about boxing. I think the commissions are very culpable. I don’t know if they check enough on the previous condition of a boxer. Thank God it doesn’t happen too often. It made me sick. It was one of those terrible nights that makes you nervous about boxing. It was a sensitive group around ringside and the more sensitive were increasingly apprehensive because there was a sense that the poor kid had no armor against Duran. And oh, he was relentless that night. You had an awful sense that something terrible was going to happen. I didn’t know if he was going to die but I knew it was the end of him.” Sports Illustrated writer William Nack summed up the referee’s performance when he declared, “Leave it to the WBA to hire a turkey to run a cockfight.”
In March 1984, Moore told a New York Times writer the true implication of what happened to him the night he ran into Roberto Duran: “Oh man, that fight broke my heart.”
17
Redemption
“Roberto’s story is like a religious story. The glory, the fall and the redemption.”
Luis Spada
THE SCENT OF millions followed Marvelous Marvin Hagler up into the ring moments after Roberto Duran had mugged Davey Moore in Madison Square Garden. The shaven-skulled middleweight king reached out and held up the hand of the new three-time champ as photographers boxed each other out for position. A contest between the two of them, which would once have seemed absurd, was now a serious proposition.
A month later, it was announced that the two champions would meet for Hagler’s middleweight crown in Las Vegas (initially it was announced for the Dunes casino-hotel outdoor arena but it would eventually take place at Caesar’s Palace). A crowd of 1,500 mostly Duran fans, turned up just for the press conference at the Felt Forum in New York. “It will be the biggest closed circuit fight in history,” declared Bob Arum. “I believe this is the greatest fight in our lifetime.” He suggested the boxers could earn as much as $10 million each from all possible revenue sources, though they were believed to have been guaranteed $5 million. Speaking through his interpreter, Duran said he would train even harder than for the Moore bout and Hagler would “go down for sure.”
The menacing middleweight champion was unmoved. “Two things are on my mind,” he glowered. “Destruct and destroy.” The pro-Duran crowd booed but few among them could help feeling uneasy. Hagler was the toughest proposition Duran had ever faced. “There’s a monster that comes out of me in the ring,” he once said. “I think it goes back to the days when I had nothing. They’re all trying to take something from me that I’ve worked long and hard for, years for.” He wasn’t about to let “them.”
Hagler grew up in New Jersey and moved to Brockton, Massachusetts, hometown of the legendary Rocky Marciano, when he was sixteen years old. Before turning pro in May 1973, he won the National A.A.U championship at 165 pounds. He was guided by the Petrone
llis: Guerino Petronelli had boxed (as Goodie Peters) and his brother and sidekick Tony developed fighters in a small Brockton gym. When Marvin wasn’t training, he worked at the Petronelli Construction site.
A southpaw who could adroitly switch to conventional style, Hagler paid his professional dues. He won his first seventeen, fourteen inside the distance, with a victory over Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales establishing him as a potential contender. The Petronellis showed tough love for their young prospect, refusing to take the easy route of set-up fighters as early opponents. A steady diet of feared Philadelphia middleweights, then toughest around, didn’t shrink Hagler’s star: wars with the likes of Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts, Willie “The Worm” Monroe, Eugene “Cyclone” Hart and “Bad” Bennie Briscoe only enhanced his reputation. He would avenge his only two losses by stopping Watts and Monroe.
Hagler, who soon took to calling himself “Marvelous Marvin,” won the WBC and WBA middleweight belts from Alan Minter in September 1980 on a riotous night in London. He took out IBF champ Wilfred Scypion three years later to reign undisputed. No challenger came close to beating him in seven defenses. Indeed, with no worthy challenger to truly test him, against whom to confirm his greatness, people began to question Hagler’s greatness and criticize his style because he was so much better than anyone else. Yet, if he didn’t confirm that greatness on every occasion with brutality and precision, the people would slowly yank him from the pedestal. Perhaps he was getting bored. Since those early setbacks to Watts and Monroe, draws to Sugar Ray Seales and Vito Antuofermo were the only other blemishes on his record. While Duran ranked with the best lightweights ever, Hagler was one of the greatest middleweights to grace the sport. He could outbox the best boxers, outpunch the hardest punchers, trained obsessively and had a chin of iron. He treated his body like a temple while Duran rarely scoffed at the extra buffet trip. Would it even be a fair fight?
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