Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [34]
“People were saying Marshall was going to knock me out, he was going to do this and that. Not very many people went to the fight. The guy hits me with the same right hand he hits Laguna with, even harder, and couldn’t even move me. The crowd said, ‘Awww,’ when he hit me, but he hit me twice and didn’t even move me. That kind of got to Marshall and that’s why I knocked him out.
“[In the States] I once went to a place where there were those coffeemakers that keep the coffee warm. I had never seen one like that in Panama and I told Eleta that I wanted one of those. He told me not to worry, that he was going to give me one of those when I would fight in Panama. When I won the fight with Marshall and got down from the ring, he was holding the coffeemaker in his hands.” Duran gave his gloves from the fight to John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late President, who was at ringside as Eleta’s guest.
Laguna and Duran would never box each other again. Eleta did initiate talks about a possible bout between but realized there was little point in eliminating one of Panama’s two boxing idols. Both believe they would have handled the other with ease. “There was talk that Laguna was sick and that Eleta wanted me to fight him,” said Duran. “But he knew I would have destroyed him.” Not so, said Laguna: “I would have destroyed him in one round!”
Duran had a similar rivalry with another world champion, his childhood friend Alfonso “Peppermint” Frazer (Frazer would win the WBA light-welterweight title in 1972). Eleta managed both, and on a few occasions they sparred together. Neither fighter had moved past the ninth grade, as Frazer left school at fifteen and Duran at fourteen. Three years older and slightly bigger, Frazer remembered Duran and the struggles of his childhood.
“Duran and I had two different trainers, but we were stablemates. I was trained by Federico Plummer, and he had Plomo. When I sparred with Duran in Maranon he was getting great already and I had to put my hand on him. He was coming along good but he wasn’t up to me yet. So bang, I hit him, and Eleta came in and said, ‘You guys take it easy, you’re only practicing.’ But he tried to show me up. We only sparred once. Duran comes at you because he was young, strong and famous and he wanted to hurt everybody. He didn’t know the difference between sparring and fighting, so every time he got into the ring to spar, he would fight. He’d shoot his best punches and try to hurt everybody he worked with.”
As always, Plomo was just outside the ring feeding instructions to Duran. He knew that his fighter had to be that aggressive and fierce every second he was in the ring. Without that all-out intensity, Duran wouldn’t have been Duran. “They only had one sparring session together because Frazer was scared to get in the ring with Roberto,” said Plomo. “Roberto was just starting off and he didn’t have good form. [Frazer] hit him down, but Duran got right back up and started to hit Frazer and then his manager stepped in and said, ‘No fighting, no fighting. This is practice.’ That was the last time that Frazer would spar with him and always had excuses that he was sick or something like that. Duran had to train like that because he needed to practice against a certain style. For instance, if Roberto was going to fight Amaya, the other person he was sparring with had to have the same technique. That’s how he had to practice, according to the other guy’s style.”
Duran has yet another version of the story. “We were in Juan Demostenes Stadium and we stayed to spar with Peppermint Frazer. Frazer was going to fight with someone at that time, but I don’t remember who. The fans were saying to Frazer, ‘Wait till you see the punches you give Cholito because he doesn’t know nothing.’ Here comes the technique versus the brutality. I’ll never forget in the corner, Frazer tells me to hit him a little softer because ‘you’re hitting me too hard.’”
However, another of Duran’s sparring mates learned volumes from each three-minute class. “Duran used to hold back all the time because he was a perfect