Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [82]
People immediately began to treat Lujan differently. “The boxing journalists wouldn’t let me sleep,” said Lujan. “Everybody wanted to talk to me, champion of the world. I was very happy. Before, when I used to fight and win, it was tranquilo or cool. Now, ‘Hey, Lujan, knock, knock, are you home?’ I didn’t want to talk with anybody. I was very tired. I had trouble dealing with the fame. You don’t have any privacy, everyone is like, ‘Hey Champ, hey champ.’ The drinking, the women, there is no privacy when you are champion. They don’t write anything when you are no longer champ.”
Ismael Laguna noticed the difference. “He was doing drugs, cocaine, all the time,” said the former champ. “He was in and out of jail. One time I bought and was working at a kiosk, and I gave Lujan twenty dollars to get change for me. I turn around and I never saw the guy again. He went to buy drugs.
“Another time I had a table at one of the fights, and we were sitting with President Omar Torrijos and Rafael Ortega came up to ask Torrijos for money. Ortega was always like that, asking people to help him out. Torrijos pulled out a hundred dollars and gave it to him. Ortega started to jump up and down, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Lujan had been drinking heavily, and yelled to Torrijos, ‘I never asked you for pinga [dick].’ I was so mad I just walked away from the table. He talked that way to the President.”
These were the pitfalls Duran had so far avoided. Now he was heading into his biggest bout, a date with destiny that would decide who was the undisputed champion.
11
Esteban And The Witch Doctors
“Duran said he would KO God if he had to.”
Miguelito Callist, boxer
AT THE START of 1978, only two of boxing’s thirteen weight divisions had single, undisputed champions. The split between the WBA and the WBC meant each had its own champion at every weight except heavyweight (Muhammad Ali) and middleweight (Rodrigo Valdes). This unsatisfactory state of affairs often saw two talented “champions” avoiding each other, both content to make money against lesser opponents rather than risk all against someone of comparable ability. When two rival champs did clash, the prospect was usually mouth-watering for boxing fans, but politics and money meant it rarely happened.
Few of these confrontations were more eagerly awaited than a rubber between Roberto Duran, the WBA champ, and Esteban DeJesus, the WBC champ. Both held a win over the other, and since winning his title DeJesus had made three defenses and shown fine form. He was the only lightweight left in the world with a realistic prospect of beating Duran.
The parties finally agreed to do it one more time in the desert resort of Las Vegas. The combination of super-casinos, high-rolling gamblers and major boxing promotions was beginning to shift the sport’s centre of gravity to the desert town, and over the next two decades many of the biggest bouts would be held there.
Before heading to Vegas, Eleta made plans. He knew that his fighter’s worst fault was his occasional lack of training and so duped him into beginning his preparations early. “It was a problem because when he was in Panama, people always wanted to be near him,” said Eleta. “My trick was that I told him there was a tune-up in Panama before DeJesus, so that he would start training hard. When I told him that it had been called off, he just looked at me and smiled.” Duran, already in trim for the non-existent tune-up, was then sent to training camp in Los Angeles. This was DeJesus, and anything less than full strength wouldn’t cut it.
Duran was noted for sparring hard, and he broke the nose of sparring partner Mike “Youngblood” Williams, the undefeated middleweight from Philadelphia. He then decided to break in another young prospect, Jorge “Kid Dynamite” Morales, a DeJesus acolyte. What started out as a training session quickly turned into fisticuffs.
“Well, Dinamita Morales is Puerto Rican,” said Plomo. “We started training in Los Angeles, and while we were there