Mucho mas - boxer Roberto Duran

National Review, March 6, 1995 by James Como, Richard Nebenzahl

AS PIERCE EGAN wrote in his Boxiana of 1824, "The sweet science [i.e., boxing] is joined onto the past like a man's arm to his shoulder." That is one reason why boxing is one of only two sports (baseball being the other) worthy of serious regard. Both provide that vitalizing mix of tradition (history with a heartbeat), virtue, and pleasure which is so rare. Would a vigorous round of ... golf do the same--golf which represented the sole sporting entry in NR's hedonic survey of last year? No, of course not. Instead of hitting the links, we insist that you relish the performance of a veritable walking Book of Virtues--most especially work, courage, and perseverance--who just happens to be the greatest living practitioner of the sweet science.

Roberto Duran is among the ten greatest prize fighters in history and was that even before, at age 29 in 1980, with 14 years in the professional ring--having held the lightweight (135 lbs. limit) championship longer than anyone except the great Benny Leonard--he relinquished that belt and did what almost everyone thought to be impossible: beat up and triumphed over the supremely gifted, undefeated, Olympic Gold Medal-holding, professional welterweight (147 lbs.) world champion Ray Leonard. And Duran remains among the historical top ten 14 years after the anomalous--not ignominious nor even notorious--"no mas" rematch against the coy Leonard, during which, in the midst of the fight and at the center of the ring, he became one of the most mystifying fighters ever by simply quitting. No one, not even Duran, knows exactly why, and after all the analyses we must regard that moment as exquisitely existential; the master would not lend himself to the pusillanimous tactics of Saccharine Ray and so uttered a Spanish version of Bartleby the Scrivener's eloquent "I would prefer not to." St. Thomas Aquinas might have had Roberto Duran in mind when he described Prudence, the first of the moral virtues, as a "principle of moral action that perfects man's practical reason, so that in every action he dispose and order all things as it behoves, by commanding himself ... [by] memory . . . , docility . . . , astuteness ..., foresight ..., circumspection ... [and by] precaution against . . . whatever might endanger the happy result."

Very few men of great reputation have fought more than one hundred times--Rocky Marciano, 49 bouts, retired undefeated at age 32-and only two of those, "Sugar" Ray Robinson and Archie "The Mongoose" Moore, fought into their forties with the competitive effectiveness evidenced by Duran. Whether or not he really knocked out a horse (unavailable for comment) when he was a 13-year-old, slum-dwelling tough on the mean streets of Panama City we will never know. We do know, however, that three (former) champions retired after their losses to him, that he knocked down and beat the fearsome Iran Barkley (who would go on to knock out Thomas "Hit Man" Hearns, the hardest puncher of this and many another generation and the only man to knock out Duran) to win his fourth world championship, and that Ray Arcel--the sagest of boxing trainers, who died last March at age 94, and so should know--said of Duran that "boxing is brain over brawn. I don't care how much ability you've got as a fighter. If you can't think you're just another bum in the park." Duran," he said, had as much "mental energy" as any boxer he'd ever known.

His ring style has always been marked by lean contempt both for his opponent and for pain, relentless ferocity, great economy of movement, and a nuanced elusiveness owing especially to a quickness of the upper body equal to the hand speed of even his flashiest opponents. He can strike powerfully with either hand, but the right--especially the overhand right, thrown from above the level of the shoulder and from a variety of unpredictable angles--is the prettiest. Since Duran never seems to be off balance, the blow is never un-leveraged.

Outside the ring Duran has been a high-liver, with over-eating as his nemesis. (The Steak Duran, at Victor's Cafe in Manhattan, is his own magnificent creation. He will tell jokes to his cronies late into the night, sometimes become loud, though not nasty, and has been known to spend beyond his immediate means. But there is no scandal: no brawling, no drunkenness, no womanizing, no drugs.

When Duran's wife was pregnant with their seventh child, he claimed she was delaying the birth so that "she will have the baby on the plane back to Florida and be able to fly for free for the rest of her life." He recently lost his bid for a Panamanian Senate seat by fifty votes: when some nefarious electioneering on the part of his opponent was uncovered, Duran refused to contest the election. It seems that, although unfrightened by the gunfire that attended the electoral process, he finds politics itself too "rough and dirty" to merit his prolonged participation. Instead he will continue to box. When he won his first championship, a new house cost $27,600, a new car $3,700, a gallon of gas 36 cents. The average family income was $11,100. Who knows what these figures will be by the time he is done? Now he is more relaxed and measured--we prefer the more fitting disciplined--than ever.