The Big Fight (17 page)

It made no difference that Mike and I rarely talked about our wives or our parents or our children. Or that we didn't share our deepest fears. Every so often, usually over a beer or two, the conversation might start to veer in the direction of greater intimacy until one or both of us, sensing the dangerous ground we were entering, would quickly guide it back toward less revealing topics. It was the only way our arrangement could work. Getting closer on a personal level would have risked consequences to our professional relationship that we could not afford. What if I had let him down as a friend, or vice versa? More important than friendship was the respect I received from Mike, and it went back to when he launched Sugar Ray Leonard, Inc. Mike invited me to his home in suburban Bethesda for dinner. I had never been to dinner at a white person's house and couldn't figure out why I was there. It did not hit me until much later: Mike wanted me to understand that his wife and children were behind us 100 percent.

The most telling moment of the evening came after the soup was served. I took one spoonful and that was enough.

“Ray, is something wrong with the soup?” Mike asked.

“It's cold,” I replied.

Mike explained that it was gazpacho, and that it was supposed to be cold, but he spoke to me without any hint of condescension. Not for one moment did I feel I was an uncivilized black man ignorant in the customs of a superior class.

He never looked at a person's color, only his character. Too bad the same cannot be said for the friends and family members who constantly urged me to dump him over the years.

“Ray, he's a white man,” I was told, as if that fact had somehow escaped me. “He doesn't know what it's like to be a nigger, and you're a nigger.”

“Hey, you don't have to remind me who I am,” I shot back.

Besides, white wasn't the color on their minds. Green was, and they blamed Mike when they felt they weren't receiving their fair share. They figured I would never deprive them, so it must be the white manager in charge of the purse strings.

During the two decades Mike and I spent as business associates, we never signed a contract. A handshake was good enough.

 

 

 

I
was the champion in the ring, and in the box office, which meant that we could set the parameters for the Duran negotiations. At the same time, Mike recognized that Bob Arum, an expert in closed-circuit television, could be very valuable to the bottom line. How these two strongwilled men, along with Don King, who enjoyed a tight relationship with Duran's people in Panama, joined forces was a textbook example of the behind-the-scenes intrigue that could occur only in boxing. You could not make this stuff up.

In April 1980, Mike, Janks Morton, and Arum were sitting in the VIP lounge of Braniff Airways at JFK Airport, waiting to board a flight to Panama to meet with Carlos Eleta, Duran's manager, when, out of nowhere, Don King appeared. King had not been invited, but the man knew everyone. King, for the most part, ignored Arum. They got along as well as Ali and Frazier.

“You sure you're doing the right thing?” King said to Arum at one point.

“What are you talking about?” Arum responded.

“I don't think the people are going to be real happy seeing you down there.”

King went on to suggest to Arum that he might get shot when he walked off the plane because he was interfering with the fight. Mike assumed he was kidding, but with King, one never knew. By the look on Arum's face, he wasn't sure, either.

After a certain point, Mike couldn't tolerate their juvenile behavior any longer.

“I made a deal for this fight and we're going to sign it, with or without the two of you,” he said.

Arum and King got the message and agreed to be co-promoters. The deal was unprecedented. I was guaranteed a minimum of $7.5 million, with a chance to earn a few more million, depending on the closed-circuit revenue, while Duran would receive $1.5 million. By contrast, Ali and Frazier made $2.5 million apiece for their “Fight of the Century” in 1971. The Duran bout was slated for June 20.

As for the venue, we settled on the city where I became famous, Montreal. Next to fighting in D.C. or Vegas, there wasn't a place I'd feel more comfortable. I was treated well by the Canadians in 1976 and there was no reason to think I would not be given the same warm reception north of the border again.

When it came to Duran, there was nothing warm about him.

His nickname was “Manos de Piedra” (“Hands of Stone”), and with good reason. He did not defeat his opponents. He demolished them, his lone setback coming in a 1972 decision against Esteban DeJesus, which Duran avenged twice, with knockouts in 1974 and 1978. One story goes that after his defeat, he pounded the walls in his hotel bathroom till his hands were filled with blood. I wouldn't be shocked if that was true. Another nickname given to him was “El Animal
.
” He deserved that one as well.

Take his lightweight title duel in June 1972 against the champion from Scotland, Ken Buchanan. Duran, only twenty-one, piled up a ton of points during the first twelve rounds and was nine minutes away from winning the belt. He needed only to keep Buchanan from landing a knockout blow. But that was not Roberto Duran. Duran always went for the knockout and was angry with himself, and the world, if he didn't get it. Perhaps it was his difficult upbringing—his father abandoned him when he was a kid, forcing him to drop out of school and scrounge for food on the streets—but whatever was behind that familiar rage of his, it controlled him as much as the other way around.

In the thirteenth round, as referee Johnny LoBianco attempted to pull Duran away, he nailed Buchanan. It happened to be a low blow and came after the bell. Buchanan was finished for the night. The Duran legend was just beginning.

Speaking of legends, assisting Duran in his corner were two of the fight game's most respected lifers, Ray Arcel and Freddie Brown. Arcel, eighty, worked with Hall of Famers Benny Leonard, James J. Braddock (“the Cinderella Man”), and Ezzard Charles. Brown, an ex-fighter, had been around since the twenties, serving as a cut man for Rocky Marciano, among others. No one was better. If there was an edge to be gained, physical or psychological, there was a good chance Arcel and Brown would find it. The two first hooked up with Duran in the early seventies.

By the spring of 1980, however, with Duran approaching the age of twenty-nine, there were those who thought he had lost something since relinquishing his lightweight crown to join the welterweight ranks in the late seventies. As a welterweight, the power in Duran's punches was the same. The difference was that heavier men could more easily absorb them.

I didn't buy into the perception of a less deadly Duran. He was like me and other fighters at the highest level. We may promise to give 110 percent every time, but it's almost impossible to be totally motivated if the competition doesn't match up. We are not robots. We save our best for
the
best.

I thought back to what the great comedian Jackie Gleason said to me when I ran into him two years earlier in Vegas. He could not have been more impressed with Manos de Piedra
.

“I'm going to fight that guy someday,” I told him.

For a change, Gleason was in no joking mood.

“Sugar, listen to me,” he said. “Don't you ever . . .
ever
fight this guy. He will kill ya.”

It was a lot like the day in the Olympic Village screening room when someone said Andres Aldama was going to destroy me. I wasn't afraid then and I wasn't afraid when Mr. Gleason said it.

Maybe I should have been.

 

 

 

T
he first occasion where Duran and I spent any real time together was at the April press conference to officially announce our fight. It was staged at the glamorous Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan. The top boxing writers were in attendance, geared up to begin promoting what promised to be the biggest fight since Ali vs. Frazier III five years earlier.

I looked forward to these gatherings. They gave me a chance to mingle with reporters I respected and show off my superior communication skills. I also saw an opportunity, as Ali did, to get inside my opponent's head, to win the fight before the fight. I won every time.

Well, not every time.

Early in the proceedings, Duran jabbed me softly with an oversized glove that's commonly used for promotional purposes. The photographers ate it up. For a while, I went along with the unrehearsed bit, anything for the show. Except Duran didn't know when to stop fooling around. Or he kept going just to irritate me. Either way, the playful taps got harder and harder. I gave him an angry glance. It did no good and was probably the dumbest thing I could have done. He saw that he was getting under my skin and now he would never shut up.

He called me a “motherfucker” and a “son of a bitch” and a
“marica”
(Spanish for “homosexual”) and told me to kiss his balls. No one had ever spoken to me like that, not even in the hood. For the longest time I stood there like a statue, though it ran counter to every impulse in my body. I should have insulted him back and put my head squarely in his face. It was not as if I didn't know the language of the gutter as thoroughly as he did. But with Mike Trainer's mantra—“always smile for the cameras”—echoing in my ears, I was the perfect gentleman, until I could take the abuse no longer.

I told the press I would “kill” Duran in June. The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. I was never so cocky before a fight, and because it wasn't my natural behavior, I didn't hit the proper notes. I came across more frightened than fearless.

The trick to Ali's prefight bragging, besides the fact that he usually backed it up, was how he injected humor into each situation with his silly playacting and clever rhyming. He could make the most outrageous predictions and say the most demeaning things about the proud warriors he fought and somehow seem endearing.

There was nothing endearing about me on that day at the Waldorf. Round one went to Duran.

On the plane back to D.C., instead of feeling great joy about the largest fight, and payday, of my career, I felt naked. Duran had stripped me of my manhood. I did not talk during the entire flight.

Why was Duran furious with me? What did I ever do to the guy? Nothing, except perhaps have the nerve to enjoy the fame and fortune he believed should have been his all along.

Duran was no different than Hagler and others I fought, falling for the portrayal of me as the TV-manufactured spoiled brat who never had to overcome adversity to make something of himself, as they did. Duran obviously had never spent a night in Palmer Park. He didn't hang by the mall and watch the drug dealers make a score. He didn't talk to the hordes of young men without work, and without hope. And he certainly did not observe the struggles in my own family, the man of the house working twelve hours a day, six days a week, his wife raising six children before leaving for a job herself every evening. All Duran saw were the fruits of my labor, not the labor itself. All he saw were the commercials on television and the size of the purses. All he saw was what he
wanted
to see, and it was not as if Duran were applying for welfare. He wore the most expensive jewelry and ate in the finest restaurants. He enjoyed the good life just as much as I did.

Besides, it wasn't my fault that Howard Cosell adopted me or that the public embraced me. It wasn't my fault that I was articulate and charismatic, the heir to Ali in an era when boxing fans preferred artistry over aggression. Did I notice that vacuum, and do everything I could to fill it? Absolutely, and there was nothing wrong with that. Many felt I was being phony. I was not. I was merely bringing out a part of myself—the part that wished to please. I could never have pulled it off if it wasn't real. I wasn't
that
good an actor. Only later, much later, when I carried the role of Sugar Ray too far, harming those closest to me, did I feel any doubts about who I had created.

Still, I could never have made it to the top of my profession if I didn't put in the work. I worked like crazy, just as my father did, to be the best fighter I could be, and wasn't that the American way? I beat Wilfred Benitez fair and square, as I beat the men I fought before him. The title wasn't handed to me. I took it.

For years I didn't understand Duran, and the confusion was a factor in the animosity I felt toward him. I figured out Benitez. I figured out Hearns and Hagler. Understanding the essence of the opponent I was facing made it easier for me to beat the living daylights out of him, and, when the fight was over, show genuine empathy. With Duran, however, it wasn't until the last several years that I figured him out. He wasn't a madman. He only pretended to be one. He was like me, searching for a way, any way, to stand out from the rest. Boxing is a form of entertainment, and, like Hollywood, to generate the most headlines, and dollars, one must develop a strong persona. Mine was Sugar Ray, the innocent charmer. His was Hands of Stone, the macho brute. Duran and I took on these roles without hesitation, and rarely stepped out of character. At least, not until our fighting days were long gone.

 

 

 

I
n the weeks that followed the press conference, I was determined that Duran would not seize the advantage in any future head-to-head encounters. I could not have been more naïve. I was a rank amateur compared to him. Trying to match his crudeness was like trying to compete with Ali in a battle of wits. I came up short each time and it reached the stage where I dreaded the next face-off. I had to show up, however, to meet with the press. It was in the contract.