Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [64]
After the break, Duran continued to ravage his challenger with left hooks to the liver. One eight-punch combination in the middle of the ring put the seal on his dominance. DeJesus had a hopeless look in his eyes as he doubled over from each hook. Each break between rounds was merely a temporary respite from the torture. The sixty-second interval forces a boxer to confront the truth. In these brief periods of introspection, DeJesus had to decide whether to come forward with the same intensity and risk injury, stay away from his opponent or even quit. In what other sport must an athlete answer such profound questions? As promoter J. Russell Peltz said, any fighter who gets in the ring “has stones.” DeJesus pondered the eighteen minutes of warfare thus far, he sat with eyes ahead and mouth agape, stare blank, thoughts jumbled, as his handlers tried to revive him and urge him on. They flushed his entire body with water. One massaged his shoulders while another jostled his cheeks like a proud grandmother. DeJesus never changed expression.
By the end of round ten, the Puerto Rican was grimacing at every punch. He again slumped on his stool at the bell and told his manager, “No voy más. I’m finished, I can’t go on.” Gregorio Benitez, an uncompromising character who always believed he knew best, responded sharply, “You aren’t going to quit now. You have come for the title…to fight.” He brooked no argument.
Not a minute later DeJesus was back on the canvas from a Duran right to the side of his head. Referee Isaac Herrera crouched close to the fallen fighter’s head and counted him out, conscious but spent. As soon as he signaled the end, DeJesus rose and walked back to the corner.
Duran bounced over to Eleta and threw his arms around his manager. With security forgotten, fans flooded the ring. A journalist jabbed a microphone into Duran’s face and he smiled, happy amid chaos. Soon he disappeared among back-slapping military brass. A white-haired and angry Ray Arcel tried to fight through the melee to reach his fighter, to no avail. Somewhere else, Eleta was talking to a reporter about a possible return bout with Buchanan. “After Duran hit him in the kidney early in the fight I knew it was over,” he said.
“With Heart and Truth Cholo Retains Title,” declared the headline in La Critica.
9
Hands of Stone
“I almost killed that guy.”
Roberto Duran
FROM JULY 1974 to February 1975, Duran took just twenty rounds to dispose of six opponents. Flash Gallego fell in five in July, while Adalberto Vanegas, Masataka Takayama and Andres Salgado were all blown away in first-round knockouts. Only the bout against Japan’s Takayama, who was dropped three times in short order, was a title defense. “I was the matchmaker for that bout with Takayama [in Costa Rica],” said Luis Spada, who worked for Carlos Eleta. “Roberto knocks the guy out in like a hundred seconds, and they are mad at me because it was so quick. I said, ‘You told me to make the bout and I did.’”
Puerto Rican Hector Matta was the only one of the six to go the distance, losing a ten-rounder in San Juan. Matta, whose father trained fighting cocks as well as boxers, fought well; Duran was under par, and some of the local boxing writers even called the bout a draw. Esteban DeJesus fought in the co-main event, but a “rubber” between him and Duran was unlikely given that DeJesus now seemed unable to make 135 pounds.
Duran was also forced to pull out of a non-title fight at Madison Square Garden that August. Carlos Eleta was unwilling to sign an agreement to defend against Ken Buchanan within ninety days of the Barreto bout, even though he apparently had a two-year-old contract to give the Scot his chance, and so the New York State Athletic Commission suspended Duran from boxing in the state for more than a year. Commission chairman Edwin Dooley then called off the Barreto bout. Before Duran headed back to Panama, a reporter went to his room at the Mayflower