Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [145]
Juan Carlos Tapia concurred, “I would go running with him every morning. He was not in shape. He was intimidated by Hearns and I could tell he was not ready for that fight.” Carlos Eleta recalled, “I saw him training by the TV before the Hearns fight. I said, ‘My God he is going to fight him like that. He cannot even fight with me.’ He didn’t train at all.”
Others leapt to Duran’s defense. “That fight should have never been made,” said ex-manager Luis DeCubas. “Duran took it for the money, and he didn’t train like he should have. Duran told me personally that making weight for that fight was one of the hardest experiences of his life, but intimidated, never! That guy don’t get intimidated by nobody.”
Whether Duran had fallen under Hearns’s spell or not, all indications showed that he had begun to mellow. Plomo Quinones recalled other problems. “There was an American man who used to say he was a friend of ours but he was actually Hearns’s spy. We only found this out after the fight, when we realized he was happy with the results and celebrating with the people surrounding Hearns. Duran is such a good person that he thought this was a real friend.”
Both men suffered to an extent from the Leonard Syndrome. Hearns had their 1981 fight to win, but got tagged and stopped in round fourteen. “I hurt myself against Leonard three years ago,” said Hearns. “I’ve been proving myself ever since, but the Leonard fight is in the past. It should be kept there. I resent it when people keep putting it up to me.”
The promoters of the fight were Shelteron, headed by Shelly Saltman, and Gold Circle, run by Bill Kozerski and Walter Alvarez, who would deal with a worrying financial ebb and flow before the fighters met in the ring. Days before the event, the boxers still weren’t sure if or when it would happen. “Even up to the day before, it was a question of financing, the promotions, the whole thing was built out of a house of cards,” said Bert Sugar, who broadcast the bout. Emanuel Steward made sure a letter of credit was in the bank weeks before the scheduled date or he was taking his fighter back to Detroit. “I was packed and ready to go home,” he said. “Tommy would never fight unless we had a letter of credit a week and sometimes two before the fight. But the promoters hadn’t given us the money. So Henry Wald, the President of Caesar’s, came to me and promised me that Caesar’s would stand by a guarantee. Wald stopped me from packing and I went on with the fight. I had even reduced Tommy’s, whose WBC title was the only one on the line, purse so that Duran was making more money than he was.”
Duran might have benefited from a postponement. He was reportedly making $1.6 million to Hearns’ $1.8, significantly more than if he had fought McCallum, but the move was tantamount to boxing suicide. People criticized Hearns’s chin but nobody, legend or not, was going to best him in a shootout – not at 154 pounds. “Hearns could intimidate but he could also hit,” said Bert Sugar.
They called it “Malice in the Palace” and 14,824 people waited for the entrants. Duran came in at 154 pounds, bang on the limit, with Hearns nearly a pound lighter yet looking twice as big. While Duran had five losses in eighty-two bouts, Hearns’s only blemish in thirty-nine bouts was the Leonard loss. More important than the records, Duran was giving up five inches in height and eleven in reach. “No one has ever really tried to hurt Duran,” said Steward before the bout, “but Tommy will.”
The theme to Rocky II blared from the speakers as Duran, who had officially relinquished his WBA light-middleweight title shortly before, followed a cadre of handlers into the ring. Spada, in a tight-fitting blue jumpsuit with DURAN stitched on the back, nudged the ropes so that Duran could climb through. He looked sharp, replete in a jet-black robe and a thick beard that perfectly