Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [95]
Duran invited De Niro and his film friends to play football the next day, and then they went on to a meal at Victor’s Café. “Roberto De Niro wanted to pay but we had drunk champagne, so I told him that was not OK. Victor was very happy that De Niro and all the artists were there. And you know what? That little guy who jumped and made fun was and is Roberto De Niro’s best friend, Joe Pesci. All the artists that appear in the movie are the ones that were playing football with us. The following day we all got together again and I learned Roberto De Niro was filming a movie at that time.” The movie was Raging Bull, the story of former boxer Jake LaMotta, which would become one of the most critically acclaimed films of the century.
When he wasn’t hanging out in the Big Apple, Duran could go home and choose one of his five cars or three maids. His private cook could put together something to eat. All Duran had to do was call his chauffeur to pick him up at his estimated $250,000 apartment complex in Paitilla and take him to a local club. Duran was finally living the lifestyle that he had dreamt of – but you couldn’t take Chorrillo out of the man.
ON 28 SEPTEMBER 1979, a spectacular fight bill began in Las Vegas. The venue was Caesar’s Palace and the main event saw undefeated heavyweight champion Larry Holmes against the awesome-punching Earnie Shavers. The undercard featured not only Duran but also Sugar Ray Leonard and the brilliant little Puerto Rican Wilfredo Gomez. One writer called it “a program of boxing that may be more representative of great talent than any other in the modern era of the game.”
Sugar Ray Leonard was a star for the armchair generation. “He’s made for television,” said his trainer, Angelo Dundee. “He’s got personality, charisma, good lucks. He projects himself right out of the screen.” For this reason he could command up to $250,000 a time for even routine learning fights as he rose through the ranks. The influential presenter Howard Cosell had championed Leonard above all the others from the successful U.S. Olympic team of 1976 and helped build him into a star and national television broadcast most of his bouts. He couldn’t have looked more devastating as he unleashed a dazzling barrage of punches to flatten seasoned campaigner Andy “The Hawk” Price in the first round. It took several minutes for Price to recover enough to leave the ring.
Leonard then watched from ringside as Duran faced the lightly regarded, six-foot-tall southpaw Zeferino “Speedy” Gonzalez, a former Golden Gloves champion who had nineteen wins, two losses and a draw in twenty-two bouts. Gonzalez, from San Jose, California, had worked with a hypnotherapist before the fight to eradicate fear, memorizing “protective suggestions.” His boxing plan was cautious and he would later rue not going toe-to-toe with the smaller man.
Duran appeared rusty and out of sorts, reaching and missing with right-hand leads against an opponent five inches taller and not cutting off the ring. On several occasions he even got nailed with a left hand. His body was smooth and fleshy at 149½ pounds, not honed and hard as it had been against Palomino. Occasionally he dropped his hands and mocked his opponent but if nothing else Gonzalez was quick – “He moves faster than a beef stew in a boarding house,” said one writer – and the crowd cheered when Duran was caught with a left hook while arrogantly hitching up his shorts. In the eighth the fighters banged heads, and Duran acknowledged it was an accident by touching gloves with his opponent, but soon blood was running down his face. Gonzalez’s trainer exhorted his fighter to take advantage of the cut, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t. Duran won the unanimous decision by a mile but left the ring with a cut over the left eye,