Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [21]
“Maynard did not turn up because of heavy rain, so we set it for the following week. But Maynard failed to come again. He had got frightened. This situation turned Duran into the winner. Once we had got everything ready for the trip, Arauz said Duran had no experience and did not allow his participation. He is a bad guy. And he decided to take Maynard. If it had been Duran, we would have returned with a medal because he was a skilled boxer and had shown his capacity. He had won many titles and was a very good boxer. But because of this man’s badness, he was not allowed to win this title. Duran was very hurt because of this.”
Duran remembered, “I’m on my way and I’m going to go there and meet people. Then Maynard shows up with Jorge Arauz and I’m there with Plomo. Maynard and them never showed up at the gym to fight. The talks heated up because Arauz says, ‘This guy ain’t going nowhere.’ After an hour of discussions, the lieutenant tells me ‘shut up’ or he’ll throw me in jail. I told him to chill and shut up. The point is that I don’t go and they send Maynard instead of me. Maynard gets knocked out in the first round [of the Pan-American Games]. I go home really sad.”
As a result of the injustice, the boxing community rallied behind the young fighter. Trainers from several gyms protested the decision and were backed by the director-general of the Department of Physical Education and Sport, to no avail. Duran took out his frustrations on the few amateurs still willing to enter the ring with him. Having grown into a featherweight, he beat Antonio Ballestas by unanimous decision in January 1968, and then Jose Villalba on February 11, knocking him down three times and out in the second round. Villalba was Duran’s last amateur opponent. With a 29-3 record (some sources have it as 13-3 or 18-3), he moved on.
“Duran told me he would not go on boxing, for he had won all fights and there was no boxer left he could fight with,” said Plomo. “He told me he would devote his time to help his uncle, who lived and worked at the Roosevelt Hotel. Duran said he would help him cleaning and painting, so he would have money to take to his mother. Duran had always helped his mother, since he was a little boy he had liked to get some money for his mother. So I agreed.”
The intermission would be brief. One day, Plomo offered him what was then a substantial purse to get into the ring, and the little kid from Chorillo would never go hungry again. “I’m painting the outside of the window,” said Duran. “I was making one dollar fifty cents a day painting and Plomo comes running in and says, ‘Duran, you want twenty-five dollars to fight, win, lose or draw?’ I tell him, ‘Who do I have to kill?’ He tells me it’s a four-round fight in Colon with a guy who never wanted to get in the ring with me before in amateurs or the pros named Carlos Mendoza. I hadn’t done any conditioning for the fight, but I said, ‘Let’s go.’”
Mendoza, from Chiriqui, was no pushover and would go on to have a fine career, culminating in a world title challenge. While the bout has since been listed by some sources as Mendoza’s debut, Plomo claimed he had already had three pro fights and this was backed up by newspaper reports. “I heard they needed an opponent,” said Plomo. “I knew Mendoza was afraid of Duran, but I told [his manager] that I had a boxer called Roberto