Hit Man - Brian Hughes [54]
Hearns hated waiting around on the day of a fight. Time seemed to drag interminably. He couldn’t wait for the hours to pass so he could strip into his fighting garb and get on with the business he understood best. The waiting time on Friday, 15 June 1984, was increased by the need to wake early to make the eight o’clock weigh-in. Hearns left his fourteenth floor Caesars Palace suite and descended to the hotel’s pavilion, which had also doubled as his training venue. Hearns had divided his time between the hotel’s suite and a private room at the Imperial Palace Hotel, where Steward had secreted him away in the days before the fight to avoid the endless distraction of well-wishers dropping in. When he arrived inside Caesars, he had to fight his way through hundreds of fans who had converged around the cordoned-off set of scales before being met by a sneering Duran, who began his standard routine of attempting to intimidate his opponent. Hearns refused to rise to the bait and told the eager press corps, “I don’t hate Duran. I have nothing at all against him. In fact, I think that he’s a great man. Tonight, I have a job to do and it has got to be done.” Duran was summoned first to the scales and he slipped off his tracksuit and weighed in at 154 pounds, hitting the light-middleweight limit. Before he stepped away, he looked over at the Kronk team and made an obscene gesture to Hearns, who appeared nonplussed as he quickly stripped and stepped on to the scales to show he was half a pound under the limit. Rather than imitate Duran, who buzzed around the podium, he raised both his hands skywards to indicate that he was the champion. “I will knock Duran out in the second round tonight,” he told the television reporters. “I’m going to be the Hit Man once again.”
It was still daylight when he returned to Caesars, the same venue where he had faced Leonard, for the fight. The temperature in the ring was recorded at ninety-five degrees when Hearns made his walk to the ring. “Twisting his arms and then shaking them out to the ends of his fists, he breathed intensity,” wrote Christian Giudice in Hands of Stone. “Reaching the ring, he disrobed to show a wiry but sculpted body. Hearns had been sparring in the Kronk Gym with some of the quickest and most talented boxers in the world. He bounced around the ring and shot blur-fast jabs. The Hit Man had never looked in better shape.” In the opposite corner, the dark, brooding Duran looked flabby and unusually pensive by comparison.
After the usual introductions and instructions were issued by Manila’s Carlos Padilla, both fighters retreated to their corners to wait for the bell. Hearns was first out of the blocks and immediately landed his left jab. The opening seconds followed his fight blueprint as he employed a range of head and shoulder feints amidst a blur of jabs and right crosses which negated the bullish force of Duran and pushed him backwards. Despite this, the man they called “El Cholo” grinned at Hearns before beckoning him to fight toe-to-toe.
In contrast to his performance against Wilfred Benitez, Hearns obliged and sent in a devastating right cross which left his shoulder like a rocket and put Duran to his knees for only the second time in his career. An earlier jab had opened a cut above Duran’s left eye and the blood trickled down his face as he took a count of nine. When referee Padilla signalled the fight’s resumption, Hearns sprung from his corner and drove Duran back into the ropes where he unleashed a left hook which sent Duran back to his knees again. Duran’s Latin pride forced him back to his feet at the count of two, but Padilla insisted on issuing a standing eight whilst Duran looked over his shoulder, smirking defiantly and waving at Hearns to continue his blazing attack. Before the Detroit fighter could accommodate this request, the bell sounded to conclude the hostilities and Duran’s true condition was betrayed when he walked to the wrong corner