Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [26]
Laguna didn’t plod or charge, follow or chase; he glided, juked and jived, offering a free shot and then immediately retracting the offer. His head and body moved as if he were dancing to a João Gilberto bossa nova. “When I stepped into the ring, this kid looked like a flash,” said Ortiz. “He was so fast that I couldn’t believe it. When he moved, it was the fastest thing I’d ever seen in the ring [but] I thought I was going to have an easy time because he wasn’t that tough. He was just a good kid, slim and fast, but he looked like I could knock him out.”
There were also the foreign soil, the weather and the fans to contend with. Panama’s weather separates into two distinct periods, the dry season or summer (la seca) between December and April, and the wet season or winter (el invierno), which covers the rest of the year. The normal daily temperature is around 30 degrees Celsius and varies little throughout the year. What strikes outsiders is the humidity, which vacillates widely and can make a stroll down the street feel like a Turkish sauna. Ortiz found the heat came in swathes, stifling breath and sapping energy. Other foreign boxers concurred. The people were also fight mad and vociferous in support of their men.
“It was a big thing in Panama because they never had a championship fight there. I couldn’t even walk outside,” Ortiz recalled. “Every place I went they were heckling me and saying bad things. ‘You’re going to get killed,’ but I was used to this stuff. I didn’t mind. I got a big surprise because he was better than what I thought. The fight started and I started boxing him and looking for ways to counter his moves and do what I wanted him to do. And he wouldn’t do it. I was the aggressor [but] he would counter everything that I threw at him.”
Meanwhile, a penniless, fourteen-year-old Roberto Duran was trying to hustle his way into the stadium to get among the thousands of red, white and blue flags, having first climbed on a car roof to catch a glimpse of his hero. As the fight progressed, men raised their fists in triumph, women hugged and cried, and people of all sizes screamed for “Tigre.” Duran, who eventually coaxed his way past the guards, studied every punch, and saw a master class from his fellow countryman.
“I was worried,” said Ortiz. “Every round, I came back and asked my trainers how I was doing. They just told me everything was going well and I was winning the fight. But I didn’t see it that way.” He was right. Ortiz couldn’t find Laguna with his punches, and the Panamanian won a unanimous decision and the title. “I never got tired that night,” said Laguna. “My trainer told me I was winning and to keep pressing the action. It was the greatest moment of my career. Even now I can still see myself in the ring. I will never forget.”
Panama had its champion. Laguna had taken the soul of Al Panama Brown, the missed opportunities of Antonio Amaya and Isidro Martinez, the sorrow of Sammy Medina, the virgin dreams of Roberto Duran, along with the hopes of every man or boy who’d ever stepped into a Colon gym and threw a jab, and carried them into the ring that April night.
“I was a child then,” said Duran. “I was a wrestler at that time, while I sold newspapers and cleaned shoes. The important fights were held in the big stadium, and all the champions would get there to walk around. But that was placed on a very high position, so people used to get up on top to be able to watch over the ringside. I saw the trucks up there and thought how in hell I would get there.
“At round fourteen, they opened the doors, and in the middle of all those running, the piece of wood broke, and I fell down together with all the other people who were standing there. I was the youngest of all those people and they were all falling on top of me. When I finally got up, I saw that all the others were already around the ringside. When I got there, round fifteen was about