Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [120]
“What most affected me was that my people turned their backs on me. I was always in the house. I wouldn’t even go outside. I would stay three weeks up to a month right here and I wouldn’t go anywhere. I told Eleta to give me the rematch. My birthday was coming up and my wife had a party for me. I got drunk but I never left the house.”
Duran had a lot of time to enjoy the toys that his new life afforded. Already a millionaire, the huge payday in New Orleans had given him money to burn. Exempt from paying taxes in Panama, he already owned eleven cars, including a pair of Pontiac Trans-Ams, a Lincoln Continental, a Fiat, a Mercedes from Eleta, and a $25,000 van equipped with a stereo, TV and telephone. General Torrijos gave him the van after he knocked out DeJesus in 1978.
According to Eleta, Duran’s share of the purses, after taxes, was $6 million, and this had been put in an account in Panama. At least one-third of the money was ring-fenced for Duran’s future. “When I came back to Panama, I put two million dollars in the bank. He has ten per cent interest on that money. I knew that he would spend all that money quickly so I made him sign with his wife a document so that all the money goes to the bank and he couldn’t touch it for ten years,” Eleta told this author years later in Panama.“What happened was, [Colonel] Paredes went to the bank with Felicidad and the bank handed over the millions of dollars. His wife bet thousands and thousands of dollars daily. His friends took money away from him. I just lost control of him. With all those people around all the time, I couldn’t control him anymore and that was it.” Ruben Paredes was a high-ranking National Guard officer who came to power in a coup in March 1982.
Duran found some sympathizers. “I felt sorry for him,” said Budd Schulberg, author of On The Waterfront and The Harder They Fall, who was in the press row at the fight. “The whole culture of Latin fighters and Mexican fighters is to come to fight. They don’t come to dodge and miss and duck, they just come to fight. And so it was sort of a culture clash that night between a predator who only knows one way to go, one gear, and Leonard who had discovered a whole set of gears. Some cars have five gears and some cars have three, and Sugar Ray had five that night.”
Schulberg’s soft spot for Duran is evident. One of the few writers who saw both Benny Leonard and Duran fight live, Schulberg always put the fighter first. “I felt sorry for him because I understood him and it simply underscored for me one more time what a mental game boxing was. In spite of that night, I will remember him as one of the greatest lightweights that ever lived. Duran never had the power at welterweight that he did as a lightweight, and he never had that power as a middleweight that he did as a welter.”
No más became a universal phrase. Do you want anything else with dinner? No más. So you don’t want to stay at this job any longer? No más. Hey, it’s funny, you don’t even have to know who or what a Roberto Duran is. “The no más thing? It’s like being in love with a girl then being betrayed and devastated, but you can’t get her out of your system,” said Las Vegas oddsmaker Herbie Lambeck.
“I didn’t speak with Duran about no más,” said Leonard. “He has to deal with that and live with that. I’m sure there’s not a day that goes by when he’s out in public that someone doesn’t say, ‘No Más.’ It also became the butt of jokes for a while. I didn’t sympathize directly. But looking back on it, naturally I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, to make a decision in the ring that is going to make you the butt of jokes throughout your life.”
Duran wouldn’t return to Panama for weeks after the fight. Judging by the anger and even looting that followed the result, it was a wise decision. However, before he left the parking lot that evening in New Orleans, Duran was waiting in the passenger’s seat of his van. As Leonard walked through the lot he noticed a