Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [127]
King won out. Duran admitted that he had made a hasty decision, sheepishly apologized to King, returned a $25,000 payment from Arum and planned to meet Ayala after he beat Laing – which all parties assumed was a foregone conclusion. On September 4, however, a 155-pound Duran, now trained by Bill Prezant and handled by Luis Henriquez, traveled to the Cobo Arena in Detroit and subjected himself to utter humiliation, fighting and acting like a journeyman. The Jamaican-born Laing meant nothing in America but was known in the UK as an unpredictable maverick who could outbox most welterweights when his mind was on the job. He started hesitantly but grew in confidence as he found Duran easy to hit, and jolted the former champion several times. In contrast, Duran’s punches carried little kick. The beer-bloated Panamanian lost a split, ten-round decision, two judges voting for Laing and one for Duran. “You a very smart sonofabitch,” he told Laing afterwards in his broken English. It was the fourth loss of his career and the first to a fighter regarded as less than top-notch. Ring magazine’s 1982 Upset of the Year left Duran in career limbo.
“Eleta turned his back on me and that hurt me. After that fight with Benitez, he wasn’t interested in me at all,” said Duran. “They all thought I was burned out. Eleta leaves me with Don King and King gets this fight for me.” Duran had trained for Laing in Easton, Pennsylvania, the hometown of heavyweight champion Larry Holmes. “Holmes takes me to his bar, and I used to go every night there and I never trained. I tried but I couldn’t make the weight and some deadbeat beats me. I go to the hotel with Plomo and I start laughing. ‘This deadbeat beats me,’ I say. Plomo tells me that my career is finished and what I needed to do was quit screwing around and get back on track.
“I didn’t take care of myself. I was so fool-crazy with women that Eleta called me into his office and said, ‘Cholo, Cholo, come here.’ And I’d go and Eleta would ask if I wanted a fight with whoever and say, ‘Do you want to take it or not?’ I’d ask how long before the fight. ‘Three weeks,’ he would say and I told him to give it to me. Give me ten thousand dollars ahead and I would take the fight. I would take the money and I would go drink with a bunch of whores. I would feel like the King of the Bars.”
Despite the language barrier, Holmes and Duran were friends. “I knew Roberto Duran before he started to train in Easton,” said Holmes. “I trained at Bobby Gleason’s Gym in New York. Roberto Duran was all they talked about. My trainer Ernie Butler took me to meet him and we’ve always been friends.
“When he was at my place in Easton, I told him, ‘You got to get ready for a fight.’ But he said, ‘I ready. I ready. I fight. I beat him. I knock him out.’ He was drinking 150-proof out of my bar and I was hollering at him. He didn’t want to hear that. He did what he wanted. I cannot tell a multi-millionaire that is champion of the world what to do.
“I got into an argument with some of his crew … because all they wanted was the money. There’s more to boxing than, ‘Give me the money.’ It’s about the guy’s health and well-being and make sure he’s not doing the wrong things. It’s so easy to get caught up into that. I know. What can you say? I wasn’t with him all day and all night long. He had a following, women from all over. They’d come to Easton where he was training. There was like 16,000 people in the city. When Duran came, there was like 40,000. Nobody had control over Duran.”
Duran had used up his boxing lifelines. Don King, never a man to stick with a loser, berated him in the locker room after the fight for not trying and for having too many people around him. Not only had Duran embarrassed himself, he had also ruined the possibility of a lucrative bout with Tony Ayala. The scolding prompted Duran to tell a Miami Herald reporter, “I won’t fight any more for Don King. Never again. Even if he begs me.”
Abandoned by Arcel and Brown, deserted by Eleta and now shunned by King,