Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [77]
“The one thing that angered me the most was that they were taking Bizzarro around as if he were the world champion, in a very expensive and fashionable car. And I was given no importance at all,” said Duran. “That is why I was so angry that I did not want to win; I wanted to kill him. The referee should have stopped that fight but even the referee was against me. There was the entire Italian colony there, all against me. When I knocked him down [the referee] did nothing so I asked him what was going on, but he refused to act. That was one of my best knockouts.”
Duran would find his way back to Erie years later, in his career twilight. Through manager Mike Acri, Bizzarro and Duran still get together. Bizzarro would have an uneventful end to his career but followed Duran’s never-ending saga.
DURAN NEXT TOOK on the tough Colombian Emiliano Villa on July 31, 1976. Villa had just given junior welterweight champion Wilfred Benitez a surprisingly hard fight and was 25-3-1 coming into the bout. Duran took two months to prepare.
“Villa was a huge Colombian boxer,” said Plomo. “During the fight, Duran hit him and Villa fell down and made a turn on the floor, and stood up again. Everyone was very surprised to see the impact of the blow. He decided to go on fighting, but then Duran hit his liver, and with a cross to the head he knocked him down. But the first fall had been incredible. He was already on the floor, rolled down, and stood up again. That had never been seen before.”
Villa appeared to jump like a kangaroo after being hit. Years later, Duran was watching a replay of the bout on his big screen TV in Panama City; he fiddled with the reception so the seventh-round knockout comes in perfectly. As the punch landed, a “Chucha madre,” a common Panamanian slang was heard from across the room. Hesitating as if waiting for someone to remind him that he was hurt, Villa stared at Duran for a long second, and then dropped. Villa was down on both knees when the referee stopped the bout. “One of my best knockouts was the Colombian,” said Duran. “I gave him a blow like this, pah! The guy fell down, gave a complete turn, and ended up standing up. The referee did not know whether to count or not.”
Next stop was the Hollywood Arena in California on October 15, 1976 and title challenger Alvaro Rojas. Nearly 6,100 fans gathered for a fight card billed as “Night of the Knockouts” in which Duran’s bout was part of a CBS-TV double-header featuring heavyweight George Foreman in the main event. It was another chance for American television viewers to get a look at this lightweight king who knocked everybody out, and Duran didn’t disappoint.
“He had this thing about him,” said fight promoter Butch Lewis. “He had that beard, that Manchu thing, and the guy used to look like the devil. He had the black coal eyes and the hair. When Duran walked in the press conference with his chest out, [Rojas] just stepped aside. Al Braverman was like, ‘Don’t move out of the guy’s way, you’re letting him know.’” The champion had few doubts about the outcome. “This fight will end,” he told one interviewer, “when I connect.” BN 8.10.76
Rojas, from Costa Rica, was a poor challenger. A press kit distributed to boxing reporters had his win-loss statistics as 26-8, with twenty stoppage wins, but this was questionable. He had certainly beaten one former world champion, Clemente Sanchez, but lost to the few other name boxers he had fought, including former WBC champ Guts Ishimatsu, who had stopped him in the fourteenth round of a title defence in Tokyo. Yet he was conveniently rated tenth in the world by the WBA so he could qualify to fight Duran for the title. Ring magazine called it “a gross mismatch.”
The champion, clean-shaven for the bout and as handsome as a matinee idol, had trained at Gleason’s Gym in Manhattan and looked as big and strong as a welterweight. He hurt Rojas with the first right hand he landed, and thereafter it was only a matter of time. Rojas made the mistake of trying to trade punches, and at