“That was one of the harder punches that I threw,” Hearns said years later. “But also one I hit Pipino Cuevas with. I think that punch was harder than the one I hit Roberto with…but I had to be superb that night. If I didn’t go in and knock Roberto out like I did, I probably wouldn’t have won the fight because Duran was a legend in the boxing world. It had to be decisive.” Reflecting on the fight, Hearns had forgotten little from that Vegas evening. “I was training real hard, so hard because I knew I was fighting a legend. A man that had done a whole lot for boxing, that at an early age he was already a champion. But I had in my heart and my mind that I could win, that I wanted to be successful, and that I was going to do all it took for me to be successful. I was expecting a very tough fight and that’s what I trained for. When I saw the opportunity to change that that was a big release of all my heart, of my mind and my soul. I knew my ability, but I wanted to impress the people who came to watch the fight and [thought] that I was going to lose.”
Steward was not one of those individuals. Ever since he started working with Hearns, he knew there was something extraordinary about this prizefighter. Although he had come up short against Leonard in 1981, Hearns faced a fighter in Duran, who would stand right in front of him, and no longer had the head movement or reflexes of his fabulous Seventies incarnation.
“I wasn’t surprised how quick he got to him because when Tommy was right, and he was a great boxer, he could beat any top fighter in the world,” said Steward. “When two great fighters get in the ring, you never see one great fighter destroy another one. Marvin or Ray couldn’t do that but Tommy could. When he was right he could go in and make a world-class fighter look like nothing. If you didn’t know who Roberto was you’d think he was a slow kid from Panama.”
As Duran was led out from the outdoor arena, onlookers wondered if they just saw the last of him. “If Benitez proved that Duran could no longer cut off the ring on a slick boxer, and Hagler showed that the Panamanian could never beat a middleweight,” wrote KO magazine’s Jeff Ryan, “then Hearns stripped Duran of his ability to take a punch and his pride, the only two qualities that he still retained.” (Nov 1986) There was nowhere left for him to go.
Duran announced he was retiring and flew home to Panama, where he was promptly honored by the appearance of his head on a postage stamp – and was thrown in a jail cell. According to a story he told author Peter Heller, Duran was seized when he reached Panama City, for reasons not explained. “Then I got rebellious and aggressive and I started to argue with the guards,” he said. “They wanted to hit me. They called the colonel, Colonel Paredes, and the captain said we have Duran here and no one can hold him, he says he’ll hit anyone who tries and we’ll have to kill him … They just grabbed me and detained me. I don’t know why. So Paredes said, ‘Just let him go.’” The reasons for his arrest are still unclear, even to Duran, but it may have been an angry reaction by the military authorities to his poor showing.
Hearns and Duran retained a special fondness for each other. “I love the man and I have nothing but respect for him still,” said Hearns. Both fighters later got to spend time together in Panama. “We were in Panama for a WBO Convention and as soon as Duran sees Tommy he starts screaming, ‘Tommy Hearns, Tommy Hearns,’ and hugs him,” said Manny Steward. “He grabs Tommy and takes him all over town. They were like little kids.”
The boxing reporters, once again, wrote Duran’s career obituaries but this time it really did seem all over. “It was a sad way for Duran to go,” said Boxing News, “but at least he fell to a superb champion, and not a man from the lower orders. That would have been tragic. We’ll remember Duran as the snorting, scowling, grinning fighter who destroyed the best lightweights of a generation and then moved up in his later years to become a triple champion.” His seventeen-year, eighty-three fight career, with just a handful of losses, had been one of the greatest ever. He had equaled the record for lightweight title defenses, won world championships at three weights and was the only man to beat Ray Leonard. Now the rollercoaster ride was finally over.
Old Stone Hands was finished.
19
“I’m Duran”
“It was like watching Rembrandt paint a picture.”
Irving Rudd, publicist
FOR OVER A year and a half, Duran loafed and enjoyed his millionaire status. He ballooned to over 200 pounds. He played music. He drank. But the poverty of his past continued to haunt him. “When I was penniless, Christmas and New Year’s Eve were the saddest days not only for me but for my mother and family because while others celebrated we had to go to bed early because there was not even enough to buy gumballs,” he told author Peter Heller in an interview in the mid-Eighties. “Now every time it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m home drinking and celebrating with friends I’m happy but only on the outside. On the inside I’m sad thinking of my mother and thinking of those times when I was penniless.”
Indeed, by May 1985 rumors were spreading that Duran was much closer to broke than rich. There was speculative talk of an enforced comeback. Trying to fend off the stories that her gambling and her husband’s spending on cars, motorcycles and even a plane had forced them to sell some of their assests, Felicidad Duran spoke to a Radio Mia reporter that summer. “We have sold what we wanted to because we have the right to do as we want and it is private. We are in a good financial situation that assures our children’s future.” Felicidad admitted that her husband had returned to the gym to try to retain his boxing passion but said there was no guarantee of an immediate comeback.
It was no huge surprise, then, when in January 1986 Bob Arum of Top Rank announced that Roberto Duran would be returning to action. Arum even played for reporters a tape of Duran insisting that he could beat both Hagler and Hearns. No one was laughing; it wasn’t even funny any more.
On 31 January 1986, he took on Colombian novice Manuel Zambrano in the Nuevo Panama Gymnasium. Duran trained at the Rodrigo Colon Sanchez Gym in San Miguelito for the bout. Twelve thousand fans gave their national hero a roaring ovation and despite weighing his heaviest ever at 165lbs – having shed an alleged fifty-five pounds – he didn’t disappoint. A left hook put Zambrano down for the full count at the end of round two, with his jaw broken in three places. Zambrano would never win another bout. Three months later in Panama, Duran moved on to the unknown Jorge Suero from the Dominican Republic. It was another mismatch, with the 162-pound Duran knocking out Suero at 1:45 of the second round. These “fights” rated little blips even in the boxing papers, but observers noted Duran was looking sleeker.
On June 23, 1986, the thirty-five-year-old Duran stepped into the ring in Las Vegas to face Marvin Hagler’s half-brother Robbie Sims, a tough middleweight with a solid record. Sims was a live one, ten years younger and ranked fourth by the WBA. He had several fine victories to his credit, most notably a sixth-round KO of a young prospect named Iran Barkley. It had been two and a half years since Duran engaged Hagler and now Sims wanted to finish what his brother couldn’t.
“Robbie Sims says he’s the policeman who will stop anyone trying to get to Hagler,’’ Duran told a UPI reporter. “Well, I’m the general who is going to put him in jail. He’ll have to call his brother to get him out.” He continued, “I should have never gone ahead with the Hearns fight. I just never got myself into shape. I got a late start in training and then I had some problems along the way. It turned out that I had to lose too much weight in too short a period of time. I felt totally drained when I went into the ring. I had nothing left to hold Hearns off. I was a defenseless fighter. This time, I won’t be so stupid. I’ll be training the right way now. I know what’s at stake this time. Robbie Sims had better be ready. I’m coming to fight.’’
In the scorching desert heat in the open air at Caesar’s Palace, Sims came out throwing bombs, but near the end of the first round Duran stunned him with a left hook and sent him back to his corner with blood trickling down his left cheek. He had learned that it still didn’t pay to
take Duran for granted. For the next few rounds, Sims racked up points and even opened a cut inside Duran’s mouth, and by the fourth the veteran was gasping for air.
But in the sixth, Duran took charge. He held the centre of the ring, jabbed sharply, then made Sims hold on after a left hook and a big right. A sizeable egg formed under Sims’s left eye and by the seventh, Duran was in full cry, banging in punches and bloodying Sims’s nose as the crowd chanted his name. One ringside reporter called it “the best round he had fought in nearly three years.”.
With a few rounds remaining, both men had swelling around their eyes and Duran was spitting blood from a cut inside his mouth. If Duran hustled the eighth from Sims, he was nearly as fatigued in the ninth. Despite battling in the tenth, Duran couldn’t maintain the pace, and in the end youth and strength prevailed, though only just. At the end of a grueling ten-rounder, the split-decision went to the rugged, unspectacular Sims. If a point had not been taken from Duran for low blows in the eighth round, he would have managed a draw. Duran earned $100,000 for his work. Judge Art Lurie scored it 96-94 for Duran, while Bill Graham, 97-92, and Jerry Roth, 96-94, favored Sims, who finished looking like the loser, with his left eye almost closed and his mouth bleeding.
“Duran sure has a lot left,” Sims told a reporter after the bout. “I made a mistake by letting down in the middle rounds. I knew that Duran was always dangerous and he shook me up a couple times. I got a little weary and paid for it. But I knew I was the clear-cut winner and this was just one hell of a fight.”
The loss was a setback but Duran had been in the fight all the way. “If this was Roberto’s Duran’s last stand,” said Boxing News, “at least he went out the way we all hoped he would, spitting defiance to the end.” KO magazine called it “Roberto Duran’s Last Night In The Spotlight.” As usual, however, Duran had not been reading the script. “If the people, if the press want me to come back, I come back,” he said. “If you want to see Duran fight, he will fight.”
He was out of miracles, or so it seemed. The nostalgic reunion with Luis Spada had run its course, and now Duran concentrated on his salsa, following in the steps of his brother Armando, who had formed the popular group Arena Blanco. The boxer began to tour with his own band, yet he still didn’t feel his fight career was over. That December he met a cab driver and part-time herbalist named Carlos Hibbard at a music gig in New York. Hibbard, a Panamanian Jew living in Brooklyn, had no boxing education, placed his faith in the mezuzah he hung around his neck, and drove a cab without a license. Duran, who was always attracted to mystics and quacks, was amused at his chutzpah and intrigued by his ideas on diet and weight loss. Somehow a man with no steady job and whose motto was “you can’t be a loser if you got the mezuzah” gained his ear, and months later, Hibbard joined the Duran team as a nutrition guru. By 1989, he was reportedly earning one-quarter of Duran’s purses, by which time speculation was also widespread that Duran had exhausted most of his money and even had dipped into his children’s trust funds.
Now under the management of Miami-based Cuban Luis DeCubas, he would fight five times over the next two years. “I got Duran after the Robbie Sims loss. I was living in Miami at the time,” said DeCubas. “I got him the fight with Victor Claudio. I was working as his manager, and pretty much doing, everything like finding sparring partners, getting opponents, and locating a place for camp. When I saw him at the airport in Miami, he was 227 pounds. He looked me in the eyes and told me he would become champion again, and I believed him. I was a young guy and here was Roberto Duran telling me he was going to be champion. Of course I believed him.”
Moving away from his Vegas stomping grounds, the Duran camp headed to the East Coast to Miami and the Atlantic City casino stage. On 16 May 1987, he earned a unanimous decision over Victor Claudio, a former Olympic boxer from Puerto Rico, in front of 3,500 fans at the Convention Center, Miami. Duran ripped open a cut over Claudio’s eye in the third, and knocked him down in the ninth round with a left hook, but couldn’t put him away. His hand troubles also flared again, and he headed straight to Mount Sinai Hospital for X-rays after the fight.
He returned to Miami that September to take on Paraguay’s Juan Carlos Gimenez, and trained with Carlos Hibbard at Caron’s Gym in Miami. Known as “El Toro,” Gimenez was 27-3-2 and was the WBC’s number eight middleweight contender. It was his first bout outside of Latin America. Duran appeared to be in trouble in the first round after Gimenez crashed in a right hand over the top, and the bearded veteran had to call on all his experience to survive the follow-up barrage of hooks. But he then took over the fight and boxed beautifully, using his underrated jab and occasional thudding rights to finish a clear points winner after ten rounds. “The ex-champ’s often under-appreciated defensive skills were very much in evidence,” wrote Graham Houston in Boxing News. “He feinted, slipped punches, made Gimenez miss by pulling his head back and then countered. Duran used his left jab like a master boxer, sometimes just flicking to keep Gimenez occupied, then suddenly following with a jarring right-hander in a classic one-two sequence.”
In January 1988, Duran was hit by a claim for $4.3 million from the American Internal Revenue Service. The IRS said he had understated his taxable income from 1977 to 1984 by $3.8 million, with an additional $618,000 in penalties. His Miami lawyer claimed the assessment was “greatly incorrect.”
Still on the comeback trail and hoping for a final big payday with Ray Leonard, in February a pudgy Duran – “like a little beer barrel” according to US trainer Gil Clancy – outpointed Ricky Stackhouse at 162 pounds in the Atlantic City Convention Center. He showed flashes of his greatness. In round two, he sidestepped a jab and dislodged Stackhouse’s mouthpiece with a straight right. In round six, he sent Stackhouse to the canvas. In round eight, he dropped him again with a beautiful combination. He was getting back to where he wanted to be, though he claimed he’d had to lose two stone in a month to make the weight.
DeCubas had partnered with Jeff Levine and Mike Acri, a booking agent from Erie, Pennsylvania. Levine paid Duran a $30,000 retainer for promotional rights, and set up the Stackhouse bout. “What was amazing was the fan appeal,” said manager Mike Acri. “When he went back to the dressing room after the Stackhouse fight and walked back out and there were hundreds of people … it was like he was Mick Jagger, just hundreds of people chasing him. These people left the stands and started to run after him. He was the king of macho and was as big as Ali for the Latinos. We used to tell him, ‘You’re fucking Roberto Duran!’ And he would be like, ‘You’re right.’ And we would motivate him.”
At the Tropicana Resort in Atlantic City on March 14, Duran stopped Paul Thorne at the end of six rounds with a badly cut lip, though he suffered a cut eye himself from a clash of heads. Duran knocked Thorne down in the second and split his lip nearly to his nose. “The punches began to rain down,” Thorne, a recording artist, later remembered in a song. “He hit me with a dozen hard uppercuts and my corner threw in the towel. I asked him why he had to knock me out, and he summed it up real well. He said, “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.’”
“Now the champions will want to give me a fight because they are sure it is easy to beat me,” Duran told KO magazine. He had long since learned to play the media. “Making conversations with him are studies in frustration,” wrote’s KO’s Jeff Ryan. “Just as soon as Duran learns that he is speaking to a reporter, he utilizes the only defensive skills that Father Time hasn’t yet stolen from him. Up goes the guard. Out goes any touch with reality.” Yet Ryan and other writers had written off Duran so many times, he had a right to be annoyed at them. “Who is anyone to say I can’t?” said Duran angrily. “If I want to fight, and I get hurt, that’s my problem, not yours. Everybody keeps saying I was, I was. I still am! How can I hurt my image? The name I built up cannot be torn down. I’m Duran.”
It was not only the writers who were deeply skeptical of his latest comeback, however. Even the most knowledgeable fight observers felt Duran
was finished, washed up. His heart made promises his knuckles couldn’t keep. “Deep down, I think he’s still fighting because he’s broke,” said Ray Arcel, who by then was eighty-seven. “And if he’s broke, I know how he got that way. He always misused his money. He has a heart that is bigger than he is. He once told me that Panama is a very poor contry and that he felt he had to take care of everyone there because he was the only one with money.”
Duran beat the unheralded Jeff Lanas on a split decision in Chicago on 1 October 1988. Far from looking good, he seemed to be behind by the middle of the fight and only an aggressive finish secured the win. Once again he had struggled to make weight and had to go running the day before the fight in a bid to shed a final six pounds. In the last round, he had stuck out his chin to taunt Lanas but was too slow to pull it away and was caught by several blows. It was a humiliation that augured badly for his challenge against the powerful, aggressive Barkley. “Roberto’s an old man,” declared one headline. Still, his camp believed this fight was the impetus for his showdown with the Blade.
The Lanas bout almost hadn’t come off, as Duran ran into a problem outside the ring. He had a daughter, Dalia, to Silvia Garcia, who lived in Miami. “Roberto was sitting on the couch with his arm around his pregnant ‘wife’ and in walks, guess who, Felicidad,” said Acri. “All hell broke loose. Felicidad went nuts. I almost had to postpone the fight because of it.”
As much as Duran loved to party and have a good time, few talk about him solely as a womanizer. Felicidad allegedly blew millions at casinos but she and Roberto also had an extremely loving, and to some extent open, relationship typical of many Panamanian couples. “He told me this story about this girl in Chile,” said Acri. “She smoked marijuana and then they had sex. She starts breathing real heavy and Roberto was like, ‘Is that from the marijuana or from our passion?’ She looks at him and goes, ‘I have asthma.’ He told that story in front of Felicidad.
Hands of Stone Page 33