Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [73]
They met in a ten-round non-title affair in front of 2,060 on May 4, 1976 in Miami Beach, Florida. Mamby needled him with a strict, decisive jab that annoyed and stung at the same time. Once again, it was persistence versus resistance.
Boxing historian Hank Kaplan had a ringside seat. “The turning point of the fight came in the sixth round,” he wrote. “By design, Duran was out to destroy the body. Duran broke through Mamby’s defenses and crashed left and right hooks to the body, which must have unsteadied him. Mamby made the battle close up to round six, but Duran showed why he is the most respected champion in the second half. The long distance does not seem to minimize his power, an attribute seldom seen….”
Referee Cy Gottfried scored the bout 48-44, while the judges’ scores of 48-45 and 48-42 also saw it one-sided for the champ. Mamby, however, felt he “gave a good account of myself.”
“I did that fight,” said promoter Don Elbaum. “Even though Saoul might not admit it, he told me after that fight that he’d never been hit that hard in his life. Every punch hurt, he said. Duran could really hit.”
Mamby also revealed a rarely seen side to Duran after the fight. “I was supposed to be an opponent and I got paid like one,” said Mamby. “Would you believe I got only three thousand dollars for fighting a champion? When Duran heard about it, he chewed out the promoter and apologized to me.”
Mamby would go on to win the WBC junior welterweight title and to defend it five times, but ended his long career with little money, partly, he claimed, because of Don King and his stepson Carl, who managed Mamby and for at least one fight managed his opponent too, a clear conflict of interest. US authorities even asked Mamby to participate in phone-tapping King during one of their periodic investigations of the controversial promoter but Mamby refused. He would box until the age of fifty-two and always remained a big Duran fan.
Four days later, twenty-five-year-old Esteban DeJesus became a world champion at his third attempt when he roundly outpointed Guts Ishimatsu of Japan over fifteen rounds in San Juan to take the WBC lightweight title. Ishimatsu had been tempted to Puerto Rico by a purse said to be $160,000 tax free, a record for the lightweight class, and the decision against him was overwhelming. Puerto Rico’s boxing boom matched that of Panama. DeJesus was now one of four concurrent Puerto Rican world champions, and his win set up the mouth-watering prospect of a rubber match with Duran to unify the two rival versions of the lightweight championship.
10
“Like A Man With No Heart”
Has anybody here seen Roberto Duran?
I met him once yeah I shook his hand
I looked in his eyes and now I understand
The love and the anger in the eyes of Roberto Duran
Tom Russell, “The Eyes of Roberto Duran”
THE RUST BELT city of Erie, Pennsylvania, was a boxing backwater and so seemed an odd choice for Roberto Duran’s first title defense in the United States. His opponent was the Italian-born, American-raised Lou Bizzarro, and their fight was originally set for the wealthy European principality of Monaco, but CBS bought the television rights and moved the fight to Erie, Bizzarro’s adopted hometown, to fit its schedules. Duran and his entourage had the hardest time even finding the place.
“We were driving to Pennsylvania and we couldn’t find the boxing commission,” said Carlos Eleta. “It was three or four days before the fight and the commission disappeared. So I call Ray [Arcel] and tell him what happened. Nobody knows anything. So I call Jose Sulaiman in Mexico and tell him I need some advice because I don’t know what is going on. They were going to name their own referee and judges. This wasn’t the real commission, but they weren’t doing anything because