Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [79]
STILL LOOMING in Muhammad Ali’s shadow, Duran fought Javier Muniz in May at the Civic Centre in Washington, DC. Fighting on the undercard of the Ali-Alfredo Evangelista card, Duran didn’t allow the lack of notoriety to get to him.
“I’m not hurt that much anymore,” Duran told a Washington Post reporter before the non-title affair. “The most important thing is that I perform better than anyone else in the ring.” Muniz, a heavy-machine operator, tried to console himself before the showdown. “I know Duran will come at me with a brick in each hand,” he said. “It’s an eerie feeling, knowing his experience, his reputation, but you can’t back out. You tell yourself that he can’t hit you with a third arm.” Duran won a wide ten-round decision.
Another non-title win, over Bernardo Diaz by one-round knockout in August, set up Duran’s eleventh title defense and a true grudge match. He headed back to Philadelphia to take on Edwin Viruet at the Spectrum, on 17 September 1977. Duran – who was 59-1 with fifty KOs – couldn’t afford to let Viruet mess with his head again. This was the Puerto Rican who had slapped him outside the ring after his bout with Leoncio Ortiz; Duran vomited street curses whenever he neared. This was more than hype to sell tickets; the disdain was real for both fighters. The fight was co-promoted by J. Russell Peltz and Don King and Duran-Viruet was the main event, while Philly’s Matt Franklin-Billy Douglas was the semi-final bout. Viruet, who had lost only two of his twenty-eight bouts but won only eight inside the distance, worked out at Passyunk Gym in South Philadelphia; Duran would train at Joe Frazier’s Gym at the corner of Broad and Elmwood in North Philly and did his roadwork with local fighter Youngblood Williams.
“Duran is cold, like a man with no heart,” Williams told a Philadelphia reporter. “When we run he says things like, ‘I keel that s.o.b.’ or just, ‘Keel him, keel him.’ He says it over and over. Once, a dog was standing down the road and Roberto says to me that if that dog don’t move out of the way, we gonna kill him. He wasn’t kidding man.”
Williams, who served several jail stints, spent time playing dominoes and shooting dice with Duran. He was undefeated at the time and had earned a reputation for inner-city sparring wars with Philly’s elite. “Duran runs for one hour, then stops in one place and, for about ten or fifteen minutes, just keeps throwing some of the fastest damn combinations I’ve ever seen,” he said, two days before the bout. “Closest I ever saw in an American was Tyrone Everett. But I believe Duran is quicker with his hands than Tyrone was. He may be the meanest man I ever saw. I really do believe he don’t mind hurting people.”
More than most, Duran hated to be shown up in the ring. Trainers Paddy Flood and Al Braverman handled Viruet, while Duran had his usual cornermen in Brown and Arcel. Although Viruet had no problem treating Duran with the same contempt with which he treated other opponents, he also was an evasive fighter whose technique drew raves from boxing purists. His skill came not from the blue-collar work of a one-dimensional fighter but from natural instincts, sharpened on city street corners. People either enjoyed or reviled this “cute” style.
The weigh-in heightened the tension. It was held at the Spectrum’s Ovations Club, and the weights were recorded the day before the fight, which wasn’t common at that time; the weigh-in usually was conducted at noon on the day of the fight, and the switch thoroughly upset Viruet’s camp, which was distressed by the fact that Duran would gain his strength back