Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [28]
Duran retold the story years later. “I had defeated a boxer that was from Parita, and Guarare never had had good boxers until I beat that boxer from Parita, and so we had a big party. There was a ball, and they were dancing and we were drinking. A young woman started caressing me but I had very little money left. At that time I used to drink whiskey. So a man got up and said, ‘I will give you a hundred dollars and two whiskey bottles if you knock out a horse.’ I told him to forget about it. And then the woman started caressing me again and asked me what that bet was about. I told her that the man wanted to see if I could topple a horse. Then the man said he was ready to pay, so I accepted.
“I stood in front of the horse and stared at him. I asked where should I hit in order to make it fall and they told me that a punch behind the ear would make him fall. I was very drunk but I hit the horse with all my strength, the horse fell down and I broke this finger. This is the horse story. In exchange for two whiskey bottles and a hundred dollars.”
According to another version of the story, Duran and friends had finished a bottle of what one would later describe as Old Parr rum, but could not pay for it. The bar owner offered a compromise, with Duran’s uncle Socrates Garcia as witness, that if the boxer could knock down a horse with his fist, the cost of the booze would be covered and the friends would drink for free. “They didn’t have the money to pay the tab, so they told Roberto that if he knocked out the horse, the drinks were free for everyone,” said Duran’s friend, bar owner Ralph Bardayan. “He was told to hit him right below the ear. Then after he did it, all his friends and family drank for free.” Duran hit the horse below the ear and it immediately fell to the floor. His right hand was bleeding and his uncle insisted he go to hospital, though due to the booze he’d drunk, Duran felt no pain.
Plomo remembered yet another account. “One day they leave to take a vacation and they stopped in Guarare. By now Duran was pretty developed and was still an amateur. In Guarare, he got on a horse and they told the horse to start stepping, but Duran wanted it to run. The horse didn’t want to run because it was a walking horse. He came down from the horse and he was furious. He punched the horse and it fell down. Yes, it was true that he knocked out a horse.”
Local boxing analyst Daniel Alonso claims to be a bible of the sport in Panama. “Some myths are very difficult to prove. Duran would go back to Guarare in the province of Los Santos. In this area there are a lot of animals. Maybe, but there is no way to prove it.”
Life and legend were already becoming intertwined.
4
Streetfighting Man
“No black man can beat me.”
Roberto Duran
ROBERTO DURAN WAS not the only rising star of Panamanian boxing. As the sport entered its boom period in the tiny Central American state, others were hunting for glory with the same hunger and determination. The most notable was Ernest Marcel, known as “ñato” because of his pug nose, which had little cartilage left after years of boxing and was jammed onto his face as if composed of silly putty. Marcel was three years older than Duran and came from Colon. He spent much of his youth playing basketball in local leagues, but was always the smallest player on the court and eventually realized that there wasn’t much room in the game for five-foot-seven-inch guards in a sport of six-footers. He turned to boxing.
There was no better place to hone his skills than the hotbed of Colon. The province had a knack for hatching and matching the finest boxers in Panama. Inevitably Ismael Laguna, who lived down the street, was his yardstick. “I liked Laguna’s style and started learning his tactics when we sparred together,