Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [115]
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.”
Eleta hadn’t had the time to invent any feeble excuses. “If I knew that would happen,” he said, “I would have told Ray [Arcel] to say something was wrong with his hand.” Still, he tried his best to divert the criticism. First, he put an end to a party back at Duran’s hotel. On the eighteenth floor of the Hyatt Regency in Room Number 1843, a gaggle of hangers-on were soon drinking and carousing with Duran. Journalist Ricardo Borbua wrote that the people yelled, “In the good times and the bad.” He saw Duran singing and playing the juiro.
“He was with his friends, all these colonels from Panama, drinking, dancing,” recalled Minito Navarro, a radio presenter and friend of the boxer. “They had no shame.” Stephanie Arcel, looking for her husband, walked in on Roberto and Felicidad singing a duet. “You’d think he won the fight,” said a despondent Freddie Brown. It was only when Eleta barged into the room to find Duran drinking too that the party broke up.
“It hurt me more when I went back to the hotel and there was a fiesta,” said a frustrated Eleta two decades later. “After that I sent everybody out. I took him to the hospital.” In the car with Papa Eleta, Duran began to cry. He realized what he had done.
Eleta still insists that the medical staff confirmed that Duran’s stomach cramps were genuine and were the result of over-eating. Certainly Dr Orlando Nunez, after seeing the fighter, reported that he suffered from acute abdominal pains and would have fainted if he kept fighting. Nunez was Duran’s special physician, and also claimed in a TV interview that Duran never took or was prescribed diuretics. Two other physicians looked at him. The Louisiana Athletic Commission had Dr A.J. Italiano test Duran for possible symptoms that would have forced a stoppage. Italiano said the stomach pains could have come from overeating during the afternoon hours before the fight. Dr Jack Ruli, who checked out Duran from the Southern Baptist Hospital at 3 a.m. the morning of the fight, said that he was “fine,” but did admit a possible inflammation of the stomach.
Shep Pleasants was at the time the Vice-President for Development and Public Affairs for the hospital. He said Duran entered with an entourage and was taken to a $255-a-night suite on the fifth floor. “I didn’t know Duran was in the hospital until I arrived the next day for my shift,” recalled Pleasants. “I was deluged with calls from the media, friends, family. The phone was ringing off the hook. I just told everyone that he was fine. The one call that I remember vividly was from Duran’s father in Arizona. I told him his son was fine and I thought to myself why Duran hadn’t called his father himself.
“When I walked in, he had his whole entourage surrounding him. He was bright as