Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [47]
Going into that thirteenth round, the scoring was one-sided. Judge Bill Recht had the bout 9-2-1 for Duran, while LoBianco, 8-3-1, and Jack Gordon, 9-3, also gave it to the challenger. Two of the three officials forgot to score the last round. “I felt that I was doing okay going into the thirteenth round,” said Buchanan. “I didn’t feel I was losing the fight. I remember the commentary saying that I was cut under the left eye, and then when I came out for the fifth round, they changed and said, ‘Buchanan isn’t cut, the blood is coming from Duran’s nose.”
“He was an awkward fighter but I didn’t even have a bleeding nose; it was his nose that was bleeding. If they had given me a few minutes to recover I could have continued. LoBianco didn’t want to know, he just saw a chance to stop the fight and that was it. I didn’t know why Duran wasn’t disqualified. LoBianco was in the ring, number one man, and he just took it upon himself to do what he did. As far as I was concerned he was paid to do a job and he done it, so he goes for the money. And the proof is in the pudding. He should have went to the judges, and said to them, ‘Did you see what happened there?’ If LoBianco had went to talk to them, then I would still be champion.”
Originally, Clancy wanted Buchanan to pace himself, hoping that Duran would punch himself into exhaustion. The punches kept coming as if Plomo recharged Duran’s battery between each round. Some fights can be blamed on a trainer’s strategy, but this had nothing to do with Buchanan’s corner, and all to do with Duran.
“First of all Duran hit about four times harder than Laguna,” said cornerman Gil Clancy. “He was really nailing Kenny with some pretty good shots. It was partially my fault that Kenny lost that fight, because Roberto was knocking everybody out early and I figured if my guy could get him into the last six rounds of the fight that Duran would be tired and Buchanan could take over. I was dead wrong. The guy had so much energy you can’t believe. Buchanan’s best round was the round before, and then after he got hit low it was all over. Some people thought it was a knee Duran hit him with.”
Instead of utilizing Buchanan’s strengths, the idea was to wait for Duran’s weakness, one that never surfaced. The Buchanan camp thought Duran couldn’t go fifteen rounds because he’d never had to. The strategy involved risk, but they had no choice. How else could he have fended off Duran? A trainer had to work with the skills in front of him, and although Buchanan was a slick boxer, he wasn’t going to overwhelm Duran with quickness, the type of plan that occasionally gave Duran fits.
After the punch, boxing people had their opinions. Former light-heavy champ Jose Torres revealed his theory. “When you know your man is badly hurt, no matter how many punches you throw, you cannot get tired. Tiredness is mostly psychological, so when you are kicking the shit out of the guy you do not get tired. When you see a fighter get hit low and go down and start screaming, he is losing the fight. If you are winning the fight and you get hit low a hundred times, you don’t go down a hundred times. You kick the shit out the guy, but if you are losing you stay down, unconsciously. The cup protects you a hundred percent, you have to be punched from under the leg.”
Reality set in for all involved. “He did hit him low and there was no question about that, but LoBianco never called it a low blow or anything else,” said Clancy. “No time out or five-minute rest, nothing. The best they could have done, if Kenny did have a protective cup on, was give him a five-minute rest period and let the fight continue. Again, Kenny was way behind in points. The only way he could have won the fight was by a late knockout. There wasn’t a big controversy after the fight.”
Covering the fight at the time, Bert Sugar concurred with Clancy: “LoBianco caught shit, mostly from the Buchanan followers. [Buchanan] was