Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  As he traveled to Denver, Colorado, to fight Hector Camacho on 14 July 2001, the man was stuck in a vacuum. The cold reception of only 6,597 fans in the 19,000 Pepsi Center revealed the truth that he wasn’t marketable anymore. His boxing daughter, Irichelle, backed her father’s decision to continue fighting. “How can you ask a man who has boxed all his life to do something else?” The truth was you couldn’t. Duran was going to box; it was his life. Even at fifty. Camacho pounded out a unanimous decision to win the National Boxing Association super-middleweight belt in a quickly forgettable twelve-round fight. “I was affected by the altitude in Denver,” said Duran. “If Camacho can’t knock me out, then who can?”

  Salsa legend Ruben Blades said before the first Duran-Leonard that the American was “not fighting a man … he is fighting an emotion.” Now Duran was fighting in slow motion. It was time to leave the sport. But would he do it on his own terms?

  21

  The Last Song

  “The end is going to be exactly how it started, in Chorrillo.”

  Juan Carlos Tapia

  IN THE BACK of every ex-boxer’s mind lurks a belief that he can still fight. He watches bouts on television and mentally breaks down the competitors, finding their faults, thinking how he could beat them, kidding himself. It is a dangerous illusion.

  Even at the age of fifty-four, Duran still wished he was in the ring. “I would have no problem with the young guys today,” he told Sports Illustrated. “None.” But by then it was, finally, all over. He would always be Manos de Piedra to his people, Duran to the boxing fanatics, the no más guy to the casual sports fan. But he would never be a boxer again; never lean over the top rope to salute the fans, never breathe the sweet scent of success, never watch a man fall to the canvas before him. He did not go without a fight.

  On 3 October 2001, he was in Argentina to promote a salsa CD and was traveling with his son Chavo and two reporters when their car crashed. Duran suffered several broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Slowly he would recover from the injuries, but his boxing career was finished. For those who cared about him, the accident came not a moment too soon. Finally something would stop him ever getting in the ring again. On January 27, 2002, Roberto Duran officially called an end to a glorious, memorable career that stretched back five decades.

  “I did not want him to fight any more, I wanted him to retire,” said Clara. “Then the accident took place. So then he said, ‘Mama, I am going to stop fighting, I am going to retire.’ I went to thank God for this decision. While I was opening my arms to thank God, I saw a cloud close to me, and I said, ‘God, I want to thank you again because my son has retired now and he is going to be a good man now.’ Then I saw the cloud was leaving.”

  Ismael Laguna knew it was time. “I left at twenty-eight but Duran stayed around until he was fifty-one,” said the former champ. “Duran came on TV and said that maybe the accident and what happened to him in Argentina was a message from God that he couldn’t keep himself in the ring at that age. It was definitely a message from the man up there to not fight anymore.”

  He looked instead to his salsa, his motorcycle (which would again land him in a hospital bed in March 2005), boxing promotions and his family to replace the game he had ravaged since the late Sixties. He split his time between appearances at boxing matches, autograph shows in the US and Europe and singing in his own band. He even retained the five championship belts that were previously stolen from his home in September 1993 by his brother-in-law Bolivar Iglesias. “I’ve spent three or four million dollars on music,” he told Sports Illustrated. “I am never home.” He helped Luis DeCubas, his former manager, promote shows for his Florida-based Team Freedom Promotions, became a partner with DeCubas and Dan Wise in another promotional concern called DRL, and talks often about making a movie on his life, although he thinks there would have to be two: “One where you laugh, one where you cry.”

  At times during his boxing career, Duran had put more focus on his music. He played in a salsa band called Tres Robertos (with Roberto Ledesma and Roberto Torres) and played bongos and sang for his Orquestra Felicidad, named after his wife. As early as 1985, he made a recording, Dos Campeones, with the Colon-born “King of Salsa,” Azuquita. The songs he sang included “La Casa de Piedra,” an ode to his childhood in Chorrillo.

  When Roberto Duran walks into a room, people no longer gape. Women don’t swoon or check themselves in the nearest mirror. Men don’t step aside or back. Reporters don’t fumble over their notebooks or recorders for a juicy quote. The autograph lines have shortened. There is no longer a Marvelous One, a Sugar or a Hit Man to recreate the pre-fight hysteria reserved for men of grandeur. The muscles, no longer taut, now hold a belly full from fine Panamanian meals in his Cangrejo home or complimentary casino steaks.

  Yet he is not heavy like a man who has let himself go. Duran’s belly may be round, but it is still solid and you still wouldn’t want to take one of his punches. When he is angry his Spanish comes in bursts, he waves his hands and gets inches away from his target’s face. Such moments are rare. He is more likely to grab any person within range and hug or make fun of them. If a reporter asks him a question in English that he doesn’t want to answer, he flexes his muscles and smiles into the distance as if to say, “I am still Duran.”

  He makes people feel wanted, a trait he inherited from his mother. His cherubic smile is that of a man who can laugh at himself and at others. It illuminates his face and makes everyone around him enjoy whatever he is happy about at the moment. Nor is it affected. For this reason alone, people love to be around him, much more than they would Leonard, Hagler or Hearns. He has the Ali aura of warmth and fun. Yet he still has a fighter’s face. While the anger has subsided, Duran with all the signature creases and jet-black hair still looks like a man who once ruled with his fists.

  The fun, the spontaneity and the smile mean that Duran can still draw a crowd no matter where he goes. One thing that separates him from most of his greatest opponents is that he has no problem being part of the crowd. Fitting in has always been a Duran strength. When he became a world champion, he didn’t have to go back and play dominoes with his friends from Chorrillo. He didn’t have to go back to the old haunts to gorge on beans and rice. He didn’t have to walk around Panama handing out his purse money. And he didn’t have to stay put in Panama, a downtrodden country where a lot of the world-class athletes have escaped with the fame. But he did.

  One can see the real Duran when he is home with his family. He has four sons, known as Chavo, Robbie, Branbi and Fulo, and three daughters, Irichelle, Jovanna and Dalia, and has recently adopted another son. Chavo and the pretty Irichelle both briefly became boxers themselves, though neither showed even a sliver of their father’s genius for the ring. In Panama, one can find him sorting through his huge DVD collection – Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are his favorites – playing pool with a friend or joking with his sons. If he is not home, he could be shooting pool and drinking a beer at one of his local haunts, Magnum Eventos. Wherever he is in Panama, he is always accessible, and Felicidad is not far behind. “My dad would die for us,” says Irichelle.

  There were times that Duran feared for his own life. In the Eighties, he was flying a plane over Panama without a pilot’s license. He was enjoying the view when the plane started to plummet toward the ocean. He started to tell himself, I can’t die now. What will they say about Roberto Duran? The plane crashed in the water, Duran got out of the cockpit, and then swam the two miles to shore. “I knew I was not supposed to die this way,’’ he said.

  Duran believes that he will be rich again and millions will come his way. He has said this many times. If fate has it, he will. Always he is waiting for insurance money from his accident or a business deal that never comes. Impulsive in the ring, he is worse with cash in his hands. There never has been a plan because as anyone associated with him knows, “Roberto does what he wants with his money.” In that sense, nothing has changed. He made between $45 and $50 m
illion in the ring. Everyone associated with Duran has a story to tell about his generosity: walking through the streets of Panama with a bag full of money or giving an opponent an expensive wristwatch. “He liked to give away presents,” said Plomo Quinones. “When he won the championship and he already had money, lots of people used to come up to him for unpaid bills they had, and they would ask him to help them cancel their debts for electricity, water, etc. And he would help them all, one after the other. I remember one Saturday when, after finishing giving away the money he had been asked for, he looked at me and said, ‘I have given away ten thousand dollars this week.’”

  “One time him and his friends stayed for a few days in a hotel in New York,” said his former promoter Walter Alvarez. “People were signing his name for meals and bar tabs and gifts. The bill came to something like $60,000. I’ve seen him go in restaurants, pay everyone’s bill, and end up spending $4,000.”

  Duran’s true gratification during his spending sprees came from allowing poor people from Chorrillo and other low-income areas to eat prime rib and sip the best champagne in fine hotels for the first and last time in their lives. It was no exaggeration; he tried to bring Chorrillo with him. “I remember when there were 500-600 people waiting outside in the freezing cold to meet Roberto,” said his lawyer Tony Gonzalez. “A young guy in his 20s had brought his father to meet Roberto as a surprise and kept his back turned until his father reached the front of the line. When the guy turned around to see Roberto, he immediately broke down in tears.”

  The stories never ceased: “My dad was a mason and one time he went to do a job for Roberto Duran. Duran was the world champion at the time,” said two-time world champion Hilario Zapata. “All the boys looked up to him. One day Duran tells my father, ‘I hear you have a son who is always fighting.’ He said, ‘He fights so much that I don’t know what to do with him.’ Duran says, ‘Take these gloves and give them to your son so he can practice.’ The gloves were sixteen-ounce and they were yellow. I was so happy to receive the gloves but I was more happy because they were the world champ’s gloves. I still have the same boxing gear that I began with back then.”

  Many benefited from Duran’s spectacular Robin Hood complex. “A close friend of Duran’s once told me that Duran would bring $14,000 every time he went back to his old neighborhood,” said local promoter and manager Carlos Gonzalez. “And those people never forgot. They loved him. He would just go through the streets handing out money. It was amazing.”

  Many also say Felicidad gambled away much of their fortune. “She lost much money,” said Plomo. “There were times when the National Police, the Comandos, the highest rank officers, would go to the casinos where she used to gamble. He would sometimes mention this but his love for her is so big. She was spending lots of money, twenty-five thousand dollars, fifteen thousand dollars, a lot of money. But he learned to cope with this. She took advantage of his love for her because she could get hold of the money in the bank. She would withdraw money and spend it freely.”

  People in Panama love to speculate how much Felicidad lost at the tables. The responses range from “a lot” to the Panamanian term for broke, “limpio.” When Duran was making $8 million for eight rounds in the Leonard rematch, he never expected the cash flow to stop. When Duran had a Panamanian bigwig break into an account worth $2 million that Eleta had opened for him after the Leonard debacle, he figured he could double that in the third fight that came a decade later. Athletes rarely think that their time will wind down and their gifts will slowly disappear. According to many associated with the family, when Felicidad had money, it was a good guess where she was heading.

  “She spends a lot of money,” said Mike Acri. “She likes to shop. I don’t know if that affected Duran. They are still together and it is some form of relationship that has strength and endurance. At times they would fight and if he tried to interfere or get into something, they would have a problem. She didn’t interfere in the boxing. I like her.

  “Once I said to her and Plomo, because I was pissed off at Duran, the insurance policy was seven million and I said we should shoot him when he’s doing roadwork. Then we could split the money. After two seconds, I was like, ‘I’m just kidding.’ But Plomo looks over and says, ‘That’s not enough.’”

  Fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco, who remembered the up-and-coming prospect at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami, was less forgiving of what many considered Duran’s ultimate fault. “People like him are either broke or have got a lot of money. They can’t hold a dime. He was a puma inside the ring and a manchild outside of it. He couldn’t hold money and whatever he had his wife gambled away.”

  Carlos Eleta didn’t blame the gambling. “All the family tried to intervene in the financial affairs. It wasn’t just Felicidad. Even without her, he would have lost that money anyway. Even before he was champ, he wanted to be like Robin Hood and give his money to the poor. [Felicidad] was in the picture from the beginning. She was a good influence and was good to try to keep him away from other women.”

  However in an August 1988 Ring interview, Eleta had a different perception. “When Duran got married to Felicidad, that was the beginning of all the problems. The father of Felicidad was always difficult. I used to control all the money that Duran earned but as Felicidad couldn’t touch any money, they forced Duran to turn against me. The father started to take care of the rent of the house. Then Felicidad started businesses. She also began gambling every night.”

  Duran didn’t deny it. When interviewed by a Panama reporter about his money woes, Duran told the reporter that he better ask Eleta or Felicidad where the money went. But he knew that being his wife was no easy job. “To be married to Roberto Duran for thirty-five years is not possible,” Duran told a reporter. “She is a saint.”

  In 2000, Duran was winding down and the purses had vanished through bad investments and unrestrained spending. He had in fact hit rock bottom in 1997, when his family was nearly forced out of its home in Cangrejo. There were rumblings that Mike Tyson, whose hero was Duran, had planned to step in and foot the bill. “He was going to lose his house because he owed a lot of money and he put his house up as collateral,” said Tapia. “He never paid that money. When Ernesto Endara was President, he asked me personally to resolve Duran’s problem with the house. I talked to the men who Duran owed the money and told him that the interest rates were high and I made the loan go down from five hundred to three hundred thousand dollars. And then I met with several people to resolve Duran’s problems. I had a meeting with Duran’s bank manager, so he would give a twenty-year mortgage and give Duran twenty years to pay for his house, not immediately.

  “We were a hundred grand off and I told Duran that I could make a campaign with my friends. Four people that could give twenty-five grand each and the problem would be solved. But I needed his authorization. He said no and that he had money. The problem was not resolved. He’s very proud. For many years Duran has hidden his true economic situation. He tells everyone he’s a millionaire but he’s not.”

  Duran claimed that when he needed help, Panama turned its back. “If the Government really wanted to help me when I was down on my luck they would have helped me pay for it,” he said. “Any one of the past presidents like Endara could have helped. When I paid for this house, they should have helped me because I really needed this house. When I pay my house off I’m going to put it into the paper, ‘I paid my house with no help.’ What a shame for the Panamanian Government.”

  Although some remark on his stubborn ways and refusal to take handouts, Duran has asked for and accepted help on many occasions. He has also been forced to adapt his lifestyle. He used to drink Chivas Regal from the bottle after fights, now it is Seco and orange juice or an Atlas beer, his favorite. Of the eleven cars that he once owned, only a motorcycle and a couple of cars remain in his driveway. There are no chefs or hired help, just a man and a dog hiding in the shadows to keep away fans or reporters. Duran is not alone; many boxers fail to manage
their money wisely. Duran had the leeches, the women who spent freely, and a lack of education. All contributed to his current plight.

  “There’s a lot of people who want to see him well but he thinks because we tell him the truth that we’re the enemy,” said Tapia. “Duran is not prepared to make sacrifices, he wants the easy life. You have to remember … there were many negative times during his career. He has lost all his money and three times he has gone bankrupt. He spends it. They take it from him. They give it away. He does everything. In his mind he thought that he had gone through a lot of effort to earn that money. Since he’s a great boxer, he thought it would be easy to keep making money.”

  Duran has claimed in the past that he has no need for material things. The white Armani suits, often worn with a driving cap, are gone. He no longer flashes $1,000 earrings and his gold jewelry has been auctioned off. Having been so enamored of the outfits of the wealthy, it is possible to conceive that Duran misses these items the most.

  Eleta is one of a select few left from the good old days. Duran said Flacco Bala died of AIDS and in the end was two-faced. He also has the same disgust for Molo, a close friend and confidant from Chorrillo. Arcel and Brown passed away years ago, but Plomo can still be found toiling away at the Jesus Master Gomez Gym in Barrazza.