Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [129]
Spada asked for only one-tenth of Duran’s purse money rather than the normal one-third. “So I tell Eleta I go my way, you go your way,” Duran recalled. “Then I start training again. I still feel good. Spada comes into play. I fired Eleta. I tell those guys, now I’m going to become champion again. I started to prepare myself.”
Any improvement in form, however, was not immediately apparent. The Batten fight was on the same bill as the Alexis Arguello–Aaron Pryor headliner at the Orange Bowl, Miami, on November 12. Duran had specifically requested that his bout be the final one of the evening, in the so-called “walk-off” slot when most people were on their way home, so that few people would be around to see him. Considering his showing, it might have been better if he’d waited till the arena had cleared. Arguello-Pryor was a classic, Duran-Batten a stinker. “At 157 pounds, Duran waddled his way toward a fearful Batten and scored with one harmless punch at a time,” according to reporter Steve Farhood. “Even though the Pryor-Arguello press conference was over by the sixth round, few writers had returned to their seats to witness the once-great Duran. With strangers in his corner and loose skin hanging obscenely over his muscles, this was a different fighter, a finished fighter.” The crowd booed as the scores were tallied and Duran took the unanimous decision and $25,000.
In what really was his last chance, Top Rank plunged Duran into a Latin showdown with the fearsome Pipino Cuevas.
IF EVER A fighter wasn’t going to back up against Duran, it was the man they called “The Assassin.” Pipino Cuevas was the embodiment of encender, a Spanish word meaning to strike a match or to incinerate. In Mexican boxing, it denoted an explosive combination of power, charisma and volatility. “He makes Rocky Marciano look like a sissy,” said Ernie Fuentes, a San Diego promoter. His dark, brooding eyes and impassive face added to an aura of imminent danger. “Most fighters don’t even have a face like this,” wrote New York Times reporter Dave Anderson about Cuevas.
He was born Isidro Pipino Cuevas Gonzalez, one of five boys and six girls to a small-time butcher in Hidalgo, Mexico. Young Pipino was a loner and often picked fights in school. His despairing father, Geraldo, took him to a boxing gym at thirteen and he became hooked. Trained by Lupe Sanchez, Cuevas would turn pro at fourteen after just nineteen amateur bouts. He was stopped in two rounds in his debut, and lost another four of his first twelve bouts, but when he hit people they stayed hit, and his wins almost always came inside the distance. Cuevas punched his way up the rankings and won the WBA welterweight title at just eighteen when he knocked down champion Angel Espada three times in the second round the summer of 1976.
“That night in Mexico where I won the title was a beautiful thing,” said Cuevas. “It was a dream come true for me. I had three fights with Espada. The second fight was the toughest of my career. I had three jaw fractures, two fractured ribs and three or four cuts on my face.”
As champion, Cuevas came into his own. He flattened or stopped ten out of eleven challengers and was talked about as potentially one of the division’s all-time greats. Pipino had learned the puncher’s secret of punching not at the target but through it and he didn’t just beat his challengers, he beat them up. Shoji Tsujimoto was still unconscious twenty seconds after being counted out. Billy Backus suffered an orbital fracture of the eye socket and had headaches and double vision weeks after their fight. Harold Weston’s jaw was dislocated. Angel Espada’s jaw was broken. Even a fighter who outpointed him, Andy Price, remarked with awe, “Cuevas could knock down walls with his punching.”
“Pipino has always been different,” said Chargin. “He has never been real flamboyant. He was always that you-win-some-and-lose-some