Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [45]
“Eleta took Chaflan to his room. That night Carlos couldn’t find him, but the next morning he found him sleeping in the bathtub,” said Duran. “He thought it was a bed. Chaflan would go to the bars and try to make money like he did in Panama. When I realized about it, I told him that if he did it again and the police caught him he wouldn’t be able to see the fight and would have to go back to Panama and never come back. So he stopped dancing.”
ON JUNE 13, 1972, Buchanan and Duran signed contracts for the fight at a press conference at Les Champs Restaurant in midtown Manhattan, then sat down to a roast beef lunch. It was the first time they had met. Garden publicity director John Condon did his best to play up the challenger’s rough past for the assembled hacks. “Street fighting in Panama is as popular as baseball is in America,” he said. Duran, speaking through an interpreter, predicted he would knock out the champion within nine rounds, and added that he thought Ismael Laguna was a better boxer.
Buchanan, six years his senior and playing the elder statesman, responded rather loftily, “Duran is a young lad so I guess he’s entitled to boast if he wants to, but I don’t believe in predicting and prefer to do my talking in the ring. He hasn’t really fought anyone of note. There are probably other lightweights who have worked their way up the ratings who are more deserving of a title shot, but the Garden offered me a $125,000 guarantee for this fight and I took it.” Buchanan said a Panamanian promoter had offered him $150,000 for the fight but he turned it down in favour of the Garden, where he had been treated well in the past.
Film of Duran knocking out Hiroshi Kobayashi was shown, then John Condon asked if anyone wanted to see it again in slow motion. “I thought that was slow motion,” dead-panned Buchanan. The Scot and his party left immediately after lunch to set up training quarters at the famous Grossingers country club in the Catskill Mountains, 100 miles north of New York City.
Buchanan’s sarcastic remark was not lost on Duran. “I had an interview, and they put a video of mine on the television. Ken Buchanan is next to me with some trainer, and I’m watching my own fight. Buchanan had a bread with butter, and this writer asks, ‘Why aren’t you looking at Duran’s video?’ He said, ‘He’s too slow for me,’ and I start laughing. He didn’t know the surprise I had waiting for him.”
Duran trained at the nearby Concord Hotel, but Buchanan didn’t take time to study him. Since beating Laguna a second time, he had easily won two non-title bouts and was in great shape. He had heard the reports about how strong this young Panamanian was but felt confident he could handle him. “I didn’t even watch when Duran fought Huertas,” said Buchanan. “I knew he was winning all of these fights by knockout. He was young and apparently he wanted to emulate Ismael. When we fought he was just too keen at times to get on with it. When the fight goes on, you could see that when he threw a punch and missed, he got real frustrated. If you could say what he felt, he was like, ‘Why don’t you stand still because I want to hit you?’”
Days before the fight, Duran had to deal with his first set of “groupies,” something he attributed to dirty tricks by his opponent’s camp. “The week after I was in New York, they got news that I wasn’t an easy fight,” Duran said. “American girls would call me over the phone at eleven-thirty in the morning, ‘Mister Duran, come and spend the weekend with me because you look so good.’ I told Plomo that all these girls are calling me and he said, ‘Don’t pay attention because it’s just a trick.’ I tell him, ‘What the hell am I going to do in New York, I don’t even know how to take a bus or anything like that.’ Freddie Brown tells me, ‘It’s just Buchanan’s people and because they saw you train they’re trying to distract you. They know you’re not going to be an easy fight at all.’”
On 26 June 1972, 18,821 fans jammed into the Garden, paying $223,901, a new indoor record for lightweights. Bagpipes played the Scot into the ring,