![]() Duran’s fusion of skill and savagery had an enormous effect on me moments after the telecast ended I raced into my older sister’s bedroom, began throwing punches in the air and yelling “look at me! Look at me! I’m Duran! I’m Duran!” She looked at me, all right - she looked at me as if I were crazy. Duran floored DeJesus in the seventh and scored a fight-finishing second knockdown in the 11th. The first five rounds of this match remain among the most intense I’ve seen, but the pulsating pace - combined with the searing heat - eventually broke the challenger’s stamina and his will to fight. ![]() Duran, flashing a sheepish grin, regained his feet, then regained his footing by forcing DeJesus into ferocious toe-to-toe exchanges. Just as he had done in New York 16 months earlier, DeJesus decked Duran with a hook to the jaw in the fight’s opening round, and, at least for a few moments, it looked as if Duran’s championship reign was imperiled. The fight more than lived up to its preamble. Would DeJesus repeat his triumph or would Duran exact his revenge? That was enough for this nine-year-old to keep the channel selector where it was, and that decision ended up changing my life. WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh (my area’s ABC affiliate) aired the match and I tuned in just as broadcaster Howard Cosell began detailing a most compelling storyline: Duran, the reigning WBA lightweight titleholder, was facing the only man to have defeated him in his 42-fight career as well as the only man to have floored him - and this time Duran’s championship was on the line. On that scorching, sun-drenched Saturday afternoon at the Gimnasio Nuevo Panama in Panama City, Duran faced the highly regarded Esteban DeJesus for the second time. ![]() Despite my young years, I had already invested more than six-and-a-half years of my life into “The Sweet Science” and the reason I made that decision was because of what Roberto Duran did against Esteban DeJesus on March 16, 1974. On Thursday, November 25, 1980, I was just days away from celebrating my 16th birthday. The following is one man’s recollection of this touchstone event, an event so fascinating on so many levels because it involved two all-time greats with contrasting styles, backgrounds and mindsets and because it best illustrates the truth behind Hall of Famer Larry Merchant’s declaration that boxing is the theater of the unexpected. In that moment, he owned Duran - mind, body and soul. His combination of athletic superiority and psychological mastery allowed Leonard to conquer the man who had once conquered him in the most emphatic manner, and in rejoining the roll call of champions, Leonard also inflicted a permanent scar on Duran’s legacy. The avalanche of speculation served to overshadow the remarkable achievement produced by the fight’s winner not only did Leonard avenge his only professional defeat to date and regain the WBC welterweight title he lost just five months earlier, he forced the sport’s ultimate warrior to carry out the ultimate act of submission. They posited a variety of motives in the hopes of cracking the code because Duran’s own explanation - stomach cramps - seemed too simplistic and too limited to produce such an epic result. Although Duran has repeatedly said he never uttered the words “no mas” to Meyran, Leonard-Duran II instantly became the ” ‘No Mas’ fight,” so much so that “Uno Mas” was used as the tagline for their rubber match nine years later.ĭuran’s surrender was so unthinkable that it spawned a legion of amateur detectives and psychiatrists. ![]() ![]() Forty years ago today, the boxing world witnessed one of its most seismic moments: Roberto Duran turning his back on Sugar Ray Leonard and telling referee Octavio Meyran multiple times that he didn’t want to continue fighting. ![]()
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