Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [25]
At first Watson held back on the youngster, but once he realized he was in a fight he tried to pick up the pace, out of desperation rather than bravado. “I opened a cut that he already had over his eye and the crowd was cheering because they always like the weak one,” said Laguna. “At the end I was making him move back and people were screaming because I was making this guy look like horseshit.”
Furious, Watson hurled punches at the youngster but Laguna was a shadow, and as the blood flowed the professional called a halt to the bout. “That was how I got started in boxing,” said a smiling Laguna. “They used to call me Tigre because I would cut the cow’s neck and drink the blood. Before that, Cuerito was a nickname when I was younger, which meant little pieces of meat.” One of the young Laguna’s jobs was skinning and cleaning cattle skins after they were butchered.
Soon he was in the gym, and after a brief amateur career he turned pro at seventeen. He was a natural, with sleek, supple movements and blur-fast hands. Laguna was a good-looking negrito with soft features, a kind soul who rarely disrespected his opponents. Only if something stirred him would he strike back. He would fight through a thicket of lusting women; however, his biggest contingent of groupies was the entire nation of boxers following his example.
Laguna came to epitomize the typical Panamanian boxer: a flashy mover who slid in to throw punches and then slipped out without a scratch. The fans loved his style, and they were a knowledgeable audience. In the Forties, they had followed the widly popular Young Finnigan, while in the Fifties and Sixties stars like Isidro Martinez, Jesus Santamaria, Sammy Medina and Antonio Amaya boxed with grace and panache. But none of these spirited pugilists would ever win a world title. Amaya was called “Campeón Sin Corona” – Champion Without a Crown – after he was robbed on two occasions in title bouts, while Martinez was tabbed as the “most beautiful boxer I’d ever seen” by Laguna.
Yet no one touched the people like Laguna. Tall, lithe and charming, he made boxing hugely popular. He also made it a spectacle, sometimes wearing white gloves to show his opponents’ blood stains during fights. “Ismael Laguna was a beautiful natural boxer,” said Carlos Eleta. “Just beautiful to watch in the ring.” Yet even at the height of his fame, he noticed the little urchin called Roberto.
“The first time that I met Chaflan, I was in a hotel restaurant and this man comes on the table with Duran and starts dancing right on the table,” he said. “It was crazy. Then I gave him twenty dollars and you should have seen his face. He thanked me – ‘Oooh’ – it was like I was his best friend. Back then, Duran was still young and wasn’t known yet.”
Duran dreamed that one day he’d be like Tigre. One day the Panamanians would chant “Doo-ran” when he landed a punch, the same way they now chanted “Tee-gray,” and he would dress in the stylish clothes and shining jewelry of a champion.
In 1965, Laguna stood on the verge of greatness, his path blocked by a formidable world lightweight champion from Puerto Rico, Carlos Ortiz. Dangerous on the inside, sleek and unhittable from the outside, Ortiz had no boxing heroes but himself. “I always wanted to be Carlos Ortiz,” he said. “I never wanted to be anyone else.” They were due to fight on April 10 in Panama. Ortiz ran into Laguna in a local gym to hype the fight and there saw his challenger flitting in and out like a moth. “You couldn’t see him because he was moving so quickly,” remembered Ortiz. “I was thinking, ‘Oh God, what did I get into?’ He was very skinny and he wasn’t built like a fighter. He was fast and tall and he had