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Who's had the best comeback???
http://www.doghouseboxing.com/Jess/E_Trail042506.htm
You know I like to play in the sandlots of the past. You know I like to put on tattered boxing trunks on the weekend and walk through the streets of Marion, Ohio, yelling for Sonny Liston. Yes, sometimes it bothers the neighbors. Sometimes the cops come, but they usually hug me, pat me on the soft part of my skullcap and make me go home and lie down.
Call me nostalgic. Call me a boxing romantic. Call me fourteen different names with assorted references to feces. But call me quick when the guacamole hits the nachos, brethren!
Let’s play in the sandlot once more. Hand me my favorite red plastic shovel. You can have the blue one.
In every business, there is a place, a dark abyss which seems to engulf an individual in finality, failure or simply a conclusive mediocrity which has been determined externally and stamped upon them by those who evaluate. Often, the evaluators are correct, and the downward spiral and ultimate exit comes swiftly. But there are those who are guided strictly by an internal compass and who are not swayed by external judgment.
There is no more poignant arena for the comeback than the sport of boxing. It is an individual endeavor of the most brutal order.
With the return of Scar Tissue from hiatus, it is only fitting and proper that we analyze great feats of defiance. It is good that we look at wonderful snapshots of those who flipped the bird at Father Time and got away with it.
I have applied my immense and kaleidoscopic mind to a nearly paranormal state. I have searched the wonderful, leather-scented halls of boxing history. I have focused so intensely I even changed bodily form. It finally came to me while teetering in the midst of a metamorphosis from a giant centipede to an immense and murderous bullfrog. The proceeding croak that rumbled from my wide reptilian mouth shook the office and brought framed pictures crashing to the floor. I had finally attained the internal information that I was seeking -- the greatest comeback fighter of them all.
The greatest of them all isn't judged by a comeback within a fight, or from a bad year, but by an innate ability to spit in the face of doubt time and time again.
Cut-outs of two faces cavorted before me as I struggled against the transformation from large mouth bass to carp.
George Foreman’s exploits must come to mind on this subject. But it couldn't be him. He basically performed one gigantic miracle in the face of one period of doubt and abandonment. It was an incredible feat, never to be forgotten, but it just fell outside of my defined parameters.
Evander Holyfield exemplifies the spirit and will and self-determination about which this column bellows. But again, he fell just outside of perfection in picking a winner. Actually, his internal compass is presently lying to him and telling him outrageous tales that could only happen in a parallel universe, but that is another story.
We are looking for a man who was thought to be finished and who leaped the dark chasm of uncertainty most impressively -- and the most number of instances. That man is none other than Roberto Duran.
The conquering of doubt began small. After a non-title whipping by Esteban Dejesus in 1972, Duran came back to destroy him in '74 and again in '78.
There were larger doubts when Duran began to venture into the world of the Welterweights in 1978. He promptly whipped Monroe Brooks, Carlos Palomino and then beat Sugar Ray Leonard for the title in Montreal in 1980.
Then there was No Mas. As Leonard danced, moved and tormented him, Duran, in a spur of the moment mental mistake, quit in round eight in the New Orleans rematch. Ray Arcel and Freddie Brown left his camp and the world pointed a giant, dirty finger at Roberto Duran.
The knockout of Pipino Cuevas in January of '83 was no great shock. It was the Battle of Significance lost. It was a match that would have been intensely anticipated just three years before.
On his thirty-second birthday in 1983, Roberto Duran savagely snatched the 154 lb throne from Davey Moore in eight brutal rounds. He was a three time champion and had defied time. This was the most significant moment to that point.
Then came Thomas Hearns and the slippery Las Vegas canvas in June 1984. Never before had Duran been caught so cleanly as in the second round of this bout. Standing straight up on a canvas he was slipping on, he was caught with the same basic punch that had put Cuevas to sleep. The man who could not be knocked out was unconscious as he fell. As I detail in a previous edition of Scar Tissue, this was the day that the sun exploded, the stars fell and the spirits of fallacy danced lewdly in desert shadow.
That had to be it, right? This was one day short of his 33rd birthday and he was lying face down on the canvas, bleeding. He had been knocked out, an unthinkable place for The Hands of Stone to be. There had to be retirement at this point, right?
This was further cemented by a decision loss to Robbie Sims just a week after his 35th birthday. He was getting very old as ring years go.
Three years LATER, at age 38, he fought the fight of his life against the rough and tough Iran Barkley. In Ring Magazine's Fight of the Year for 1989, he scored a knockdown in round eleven and eked out the most unlikely of victories. He was Middleweight Champion of the World. Unbelievable.
After a rubber match decision loss against Sugar Ray Leonard in 1989, Duran was stopped in six rounds by one Pat Lawlor in his very next fight. The official reason was a shoulder injury. But...there it is. The prime Duran was gone.
After two decision losses to Vinnie Panzienza in '94 and '95 he was just another worn out fighter who wouldn't leave. But there was one more thing.
In June 1996, about a week after his 45th birthday, he fought, once again the fight of his life against Hector "Macho" Camacho. In a fight in which he should have been handily outboxed and frustrated, he landed his right lead over and over again. In a decision that could have gone either way, he lost a close decision. But he was the man of the moment.
He fought on, too long of course. You can't totally blame him. After all, one could believe they were truly powerful beyond the laws of physics after performing as he did at age 45.
There would be more failures and a few lower grade successes. He avenged his defeat to Pat Lawlor on his 49th birthday in June 2000. It was for a minor (NBA) title and of little significance on paper. But it put the period at the end of a very significant sentence that reads.... Roberto Duran was, without doubt, The Greatest Comeback Fighter of All Time.
As with any edition of Scar Tissue, there is a price to pay. As everything came together and I finished my perfect vision, and this column, I seem to have morphed into a beige Power Ranger. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously, and to get intense amorous looks from women. Oh well. Ten years ago, I’d be in there. See? Nostalgia works.
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Originally Posted by Britkid
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