Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [114]
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 corner. “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.