Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [94]
By the end, Duran had Palomino’s full respect. “He outboxed me every round and outhustled me the entire fight,” said the Mexican. “It was the only fight that I didn’t feel mentally or physically ready for. Duran and Benitez were the best defensive fighters I faced. They were notches above anyone else. After that fight, I told them that Duran would be champ of the world again, if he fights Leonard like he did against me. I had respect for him before the bout but so much more after.”
It had been a great fight, lacking the changes of fortune of the very best but providing a masterclass in in-fighting, punching and conditioning. Boxing News called it “a wonderful fight, a fight of a life-time.”
Celebrations were muted, however, when Duran was told the bad news about a friend. He was told in a New York hotel lobby of the death of Chaflan, his gypsy Svengali from the old days, killed by a car. One reporter remembered seeing Chaflan at a store opening in Caledonia. “Candido Diaz was Chaflan, not Superman,” remarked one paper. “Because of this he was unable to resist the impact of the vehicle that hit him.”
Duran broke down and cried. “They wouldn’t tell me until after the Palomino fight,” he said. “They said that Chaflan was killed by a car. I cried a lot. He knew me since I was around seven or eight years old. Chaflan built a tree house and we would all sleep up there until four a.m. and then go get a ticket for the newspapers. He was never a mean person to children. With a dollar he would take you to eat or to the movies. Later he was accused of being a pervert and that he would corrupt children but I never saw that and I don’t believe it.”
Many newspapers now carried planted publicity about Duran challenging the winner of the Wilfred Benitez-Ray Leonard WBC title bout. WBA champ Pipino Cuevas, who many believed was the most dangerous welterweight around, was also heavily touted as a Duran target and reportedly wanted a guarantee of half a million dollars. Don King, who promoted the Palomino fight, sided with the WBC while Bob Arum lined up with the WBA.
Palomino retired from the sport on his thirtieth birthday. He would make an improbable comeback almost eighteen years later, at the age of forty-eight, and won four bouts before losing for the last time in 1998. By then, his father had succumbed to cancer, unleashing emotions he had kept bottled for years. “Everybody was telling me that, back when I had the world title, my father was so proud of me and that he was always telling everybody about me,” said Palomino in a 1997 interview. “But he never said any of that to me.” Unlike the open relationship Palomino had with his mother Maria, his father wasn’t one to express his inner feelings.
Duran’s status as an honorary New Yorker was confirmed by his fabulous performance. He often hung out in the city with another Panamanian icon, Ruben Blades, the salsa king. “I knew Ruben Blades when he was nobody. I stayed in the Hotel Mayflower in New York and he used to go there every day to play soccer. After the game, he used to go back to my room and there he stayed playing dominoes. After that we would go eat. He would always come looking for me when he moved to New York and knew I had a fight coming up.” A salsa fanatic, Duran was also friends with Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and Hector Lavoe.
After training, Duran would often sit in Central Park, where he liked to watch the people and cars go by. One day he was there when he saw his friend Flacco Bala talking to a man with a child on the shoulders. Duran ran over and was introduced to the man – Robert De Niro, the hottest male lead in Hollywood. They shook hands.
“Robert invited me to go to his room. He lived in the same hotel where I was staying. He said, ‘I want you to come to my room. I am going to hold a party so that you meet my friends. You are my favorite.’ Twenty-five minutes later, the telephone rang. It was Robert De Niro, but he talked in English, and I do not talk English. So I called Bala and asked him to come with me. And we went there and started talking.