Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [78]
Duran was paid $125,000 or nearly $65,000 per minute of work. With every strand of his slicked-back hair still in place, there was little evidence that Duran had just earned a night’s pay. “I was in very good condition. I hit him in the pecho,” Duran told an interviewer in the ring while Rojas was still lying flat on his back. A guy with a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth handed Duran a flag, which he waved at the crowd. Another fight, another body in his wake and Duran was off. Carlos Eleta hurried to give Duran an ice cream cone in the dressing room afterwards. “I told Duran not to worry about the title but about the ice cream,” said Eleta. “It worked.”
The boxing fraternity was impressed. “Duran could be the man American boxing so desperately needs to revive interest in the divisions other than heavyweight,” said Boxing International.
Duran’s next bout was on another Don King show that February, this time at the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, on an indoor tennis court in front of just 1,200 spectators. His opponent was Vilomar Fernandez, a short, feisty challenger born in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic but fighting out of the Bronx. Fernandez’s record was an unimpressive 19-5-1, with only eight knockouts, but he was a good boxer. It was the first defense of Duran’s title reign that had not been transmitted to Panama.
Despite his lack of power, Fernandez was deft at pinpointing Duran’s head as the champion bulled in. It was no one-sided affair as Fernandez, a water-bug skirting the ring, often moved to his right, paused, then changed direction. His peek-a-boo, in-and-out style kept him out of harm’s way as the rounds ticked off.
In round five, however, as Fernandez was once again backpedaling, Panamanian referee Sergio Ley interceded and warned him to start throwing punches. Fernandez fought bravely for the remainder of the fight, as if Ley’s warning forced Fernandez to abandon an effective style to stand in front of Duran. Does a referee have the right to tell a fighter that his brand of fighting, although effective, isn’t what the fans want to see?
“The doctor who treated me that fight was Doctor Pacheco, who was a good friend of Eleta’s,” said Duran. “I had a problem with the liver and the spleen and after examining me he said he was going to give me a shot for my liver to prevent damage in the spleen. He gave me the shot and I fell asleep. Then I heard when Pacheco was telling Fernandez, ‘Strike underneath, underneath, his liver is in bad condition.’ And I thought he was telling this to me, so I kept hitting him in the liver. I then knocked him down with two strong blows.”
Although capable of knocking out anyone with his straight right, Duran’s opponents also had to be aware of his left hook and right uppercut. In the thirteenth round, Duran came out with hooks to the body. However, most of the round was a demonstration on the clinch-and-hold tactic displayed by the Bronx challenger. Duran finally released a left hook to the liver followed by a token right to the chest that sat a dejected Fernandez down in a corner. Ley counted him out as he sat there with his head slumped. Seconds later, Duran slung his arm around his opponent’s shoulder, consoling him like a younger brother.
After the bout was stopped in the thirteenth, a group of reporters huddled around Roberto in the middle of the ring. After telling one reporter that Fernandez was a smart fighter who knew how to move effectively, Duran also explained how he was cold until the eighth round when he started to look for the knockout punch.
Then, in a spontaneous act that Duran rarely showed in fight interviews, he started speaking English for the reporter. In the middle of the ring, Duran