Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [97]
Three weeks later, Duran scored his fifty-fifth inside-the-distance win when he punished Wellington Wheatley of Ecuador with two early knockdowns before dropping him for keeps with a right forty-four seconds into the sixth round. “Wheatley countered quite well at times and seemed to jolt Duran a couple of times in the first round with rights,” reported Boxing News, “but Duran took charge in the second when a cracking right hand lead to the chin put Wheatley down on the seat of his trunks against the ropes.” Wheatley got up at four and survived the round but by the fifth he was wilting and took another count from a right-hander to the back of the neck. Duran lowered the boom in the sixth, nailing his foe with a right and then a cruel short left hook, forcing the referee to step in without bothering to count.
“The monster’s loose and on his way to the welterweight title,” said NBC-TV boxing adviser Dr Ferdie Pacheco, at ringside in Las Vegas.
13
El Macho
A dictionary translation of the Spanish word macho captures the essence of Latin American masculinity. Besides male and masculine, the word means tough, strong, stupid, big, huge, splendid, terrific and doubles as a slang term for a sledgehammer.
Duncan Green, Faces of Latin America
IT STARTED OUT as a leisurely stroll through the streets of Montreal. Ray Leonard, his wife and childhood sweetheart Juanita, trainer Angelo Dundee and his wife were taking a break from the pressure cooker atmosphere before a fight. The weeks leading up to a big bout lie heavy with anxiety, sickness and tension and this was a brief afternoon escape from the hype. But in the summer of 1980, nobody could touch Ray Leonard. He was young, rich and approachable, and had all the talent he could handle.
So when Leonard saw Roberto Duran coming towards him, he smiled that world-seeping-through-his-white-teeth smile and waited for a friendly, or at least civil, response. Instead Duran, who was once described as cursing better in English than most Americans, unleashed a ferocious volley of abuse. He then gave Leonard the finger. “Duran comes around and starts really giving it to Ray and Juanita, talking about ‘I’m going to kill your husband’ and stuff like that,” remembered Dundee. “That got to Ray. He couldn’t believe that Duran could be so crude in front of his wife. He was a family man and father.” Leonard later told the Los Angeles Times, “He taunted me. He cursed my mother, my children, my wife. He said unbelievable things and I let them get to me.”
No punches were exchanged but Duran had left his mark. Leonard may have been a supremely talented boxer, but his antagonist was a streetfighter who walked around Panama with a 680-pound lion named Walla strapped to his arm (a present from Rigoberto Paredes, the former head of the Panama racetrack). Perhaps Leonard was already beginning to wonder whether this fight was a mistake.
His first choice of opponent had been WBA champion Pipino Cuevas in a unification match, but this would have left Don King facing “a severe cold in the wallet,” according to Boxing News. King, an arch-manipulator, contacted WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who in turn called the Panamanian Government. His pitch was that Leonard was doing the dirty to a son of Panama and that the WBA was conniving to allow Cuevas to fight Leonard. The Government then leaned on the Panama-based WBA, which in turn put the squeeze on its own champion, Cuevas. Cuevas was suddenly forced to pull out with an “injury” and Duran, King’s fighter, was back in the picture.
Having originally prepared for the Mexican bomber, Leonard was already in shape. Indeed some felt Cuevas would have been a more dangerous opponent. In eight contests at 147 pounds, Duran had scored only four knockouts. “I think a few boxers lost respect for me,” Duran told Sports Illustrated’s William Nack before the Montreal showdown. “Some said I lost my ability to punch with power. But let me tell you something: if a man is born with