Cont...

MYTHS
Duran’s strategy was drilled into him. He was instructed to be elusive against the jab, close the distance, crowd Leonard, and hammer the body. Leonard’s aggressive strategy was not expected. It made things more not less difficult to cope with for precisely the reasons that Dundee had alluded to –good little guys don’t beat good big guys. “In this fight, Duran’s not the puncher,” he added, “my guy is.” Their respective knockout percentages over their previous five fights confirmed this: Duran’s was 40%, Leonard’s was 100%. Leonard stated that he planned on “standing and fighting more than expected.” “They all think I’m going to run. I’m not,” he said to New York Magazine, “I’m not changing my style at all… he’ll be beaten to the punch…those are the facts,” he continued, “What’s going to beat Roberto Duran is Sugar Ray Leonard.”

Dundee substantiated this in his autobiography. Leonard’s strategy became certain from the moment that he watched the films and deconstructed Duran’s style. Duran, he said, was a “heel-to-toe guy. He takes two steps to get to you. So the idea was not to give him those two steps, not to move too far away because the more distance you gave him, the more effective he was. What you can’t do in the face of Duran’s aggression was run from it, because then he picks up momentum. My guy wasn’t going to run from him.”

So there you have it.

Leonard’s strategy in Montreal was deliberate, and sound. After the fight, Dundee and Leonard revised history and a willing press has gone along with it ever since. We’ve been spoon-fed a fable that has long since crystallized into orthodox boxing lore. It is the archetypal image of the Latin bully who “tricked” the All-American Hero into an alley fight, and it sprang from the idea that Leonard “did not fight his fight” because Duran challenged his masculinity. The problem is that it is at complete odds with statements made by Leonard and Dundee about Leonard’s clear physical advantages and the strategy that would be formed around those advantages. It contradicts Dundee’s earlier statements about Duran’s high level of skill and it contradicts statements that both had made immediately after the bout –before they had time to think about posterity: “You’ve got to give credit to Duran,” Dundee told journalists, “he makes you fight his fight.” When asked why he fought Duran’s fight, Leonard said he had “no alternative.”

Since then, Leonard’s loss to Duran has been cleverly spun, re-packaged, and sold at a reduced price. It’s time to find our receipt and exchange a fable for the facts. And the facts begin with this: when both fighters were at their best, Duran was better.

MEMENTO MORI
Duran’s record now stood at 72-1 (56). As he simmered down in the aftermath, the magnitude of what had just happened set in. He knew that Leonard was great. At the post-fight press conference he was asked if Ray Leonard was the toughest opponent he ever faced. Duran, his face scuffed and swollen, hesitated and thought for a moment. “Si,” he softly said, “…si.”

And then something changed. Whatever it was that raged inside Roberto Duran –a legion of devils, his hatred of Leonard, the memory of a child begging on the streets of Chorrillo– faded from that moment.

He became more sedate. After thirteen years of pasion violenta and after a victory that is almost without equal in the annals of boxing history, he fell like all who forget that they are mortal; and his humiliation would be so complete that it would obscure everything else.

Old embers would flare up only sporadically after the fateful year of 1980. Three times more he would remind the world of his greatness against men that no lightweight in his right mind would ever face. By then his trainers had walked away and soon retired for keeps. They joined us and watched a melting legend fight youngsters. As the curtain slowly dropped on a career that would span over thirty years, there was little left that recalled what he was; just some old tricks in an arsenal ransacked by age and an unbecoming appetite.

But what he was should not be eclipsed.

It should be remembered.

When the splendor that was Sugar Ray Leonard had the whole sports world squinting, Freddie Brown and Ray Arcel applied that old school method in the shadow of Stillman’s gym. They brought the Panamanian to a peak of human performance so perfect in its blend of science and ferocity that it would never be approached again –by Duran or anyone else.

Fifteen rounds unveiled a god of war.

After the final bell, a jubilant Duran leaps into the air. Before he lands he sees Leonard daring to raise his arms in victory and the coals of his eyes burn. He shoves and spits at his adversary, then stalks toward the ropes at ringside and grabs his crotch as he hurls Spanish epithets. Arcel tries to calm him down. Leonard’s brother Roger rushes him and is knocked flat with one shot. The announcer shouts “le nouveau--” into the microphone, and victorious, the raging champion is hoisted up above the crowd –above the world, still cursing the vanquished.