Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [128]
The Harvard-educated lawyer was distinctly unimpressed but someone whose judgment he respected spoke up for Duran. Teddy Brenner, for years the matchmaker at Madison Square Garden, had booked Duran for his first ever US bout. In 1980, Brenner had joined Top Rank, Inc. Now he told Arum, “There’s nothing wrong with this guy, physically. He’s never taken a beating. Whether or not he wants to fight again is a question mark.” Brenner later told The Ring, “King chased him. Duran was waiting for one kind word. He came to us, we sat him down. We gave him a chance. If we hadn’t, it might have been the end for him.” Arum admitted, “I don’t know about boxing, but I’ve got a man who knows as much about fighters as anybody, and Teddy said there was nothing wrong with Duran that being in good physical and mental condition wouldn’t solve. Teddy said that if you get him mentally right, he’d probably beat anybody around.”
To see what he had left, Arum and Brenner found Duran a match with another former British champion, Jimmy Batten, who had moved Stateside to further his career. The bout was negotiated on Duran’s behalf, not by Carlos Eleta, but by his former matchmaker Luis Spada, an old and loyal friend. It marked the final rift between one of the great partnerships in boxing.
In the bad times after Montreal, when crowds threw stones at Duran’s house and ripped down his mural on Avenida Balboa, Luis Spada had gone to see him and said, “Anytime you need me, even to carry the spit bucket in your corner, you could call me.” Duran had not forgotten. Quiet and reserved, yet respected for his boxing acumen, Spada would be content to stay in the background.
He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and caught the boxing bug and fed an early boxing fix when he visited boxing gyms while stationed in New York as a member of the Argentine Navy during his twenties. In the early Seventies, he built a reputation in boxing in Los Angeles. In 1971, he was invited to dinner with “some boxing people” from Panama. They turned out to be Carlos Eleta and his lawyer, Jorge Ruben Rosas. Eleta talked about his desire for a world champ and Spada said he could get a title fight with Nicolino “The Untouchable” Locche for Eleta’s fighter Peppermint Frazer. “He was very enthusiastic,” recalled Spada. “He told me to make the fight with Locche through his manager Tito Lectoure. Eleta invited me to Panama and we dicussed the terms of the fight. I went to Argentina, and closed the deal with Lectoure for March 1972.”
Frazer won, and Eleta talked Spada into working as his matchmaker and boxing advisor while making Panama his permanent home. He became a fixture in Duran’s entourage and went with him around the world. Spada broke off with Eleta in 1975, and started his own promotional company in Panama City. He developd his own stable of world champions, including Panamanians Rigoberto Riasco and Hilario Zapata and Nicaraguan Eddie Gazo.
In September 1982, in the depths of his doldrums, Duran called Spada and asked him to handle him for the Batten fight. “I tell Spada, ‘I don’t want you to carry my bucket for me; I want you to be my manager,’” recalled Duran. “After that, Spada goes back to Eleta and tells him that I asked him to be my manager. He asks Eleta if he still has some formal contract with him. Spada tells Eleta, ‘I’m going to help Duran.’ Eleta says, ‘Keep him, keep him.’ I’m in the gym; the Rock is back.”
Spada recalled the episode: “I always had a good appreciation for Roberto. He called me one day and asked me to be his manager and I said that I would be over at five p.m. the next day because I needed to talk to Mr Eleta first to be sure that Duran didn’t have any commitments with Eleta. I didn’t want to take a fighter from anybody. Before I got him, Duran was losing to guys