The Fab Four: Part One: Boxing's Last Golden Era

By Lea Worrall

Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns were involved in the last golden era of boxing: a time where proving to be the best around was far more important than losing an unbeaten record. These four warriors had some epic struggles between 1980 to 1989. Throw Wilfred Benitez into the mix and you had one of the best periods in boxing of all time.

 

Duran: Brought up in great poverty, there was nothing he wouldn't do to provide for his family. This dark-eyed warrior liked nothing more than to inflict pain and suffering on his opponents in the ring: outside it, he was a good-hearted and generous man.

 

Hagler: The mean, brooding middleweight felt the boxing authorities were against him from winning the world middleweight championship. The blue-collar champion, who would apply Vaseline to his own face and carry his own gym bag, reigned supreme for seven years, and to this day still feels aggrieved by his points defeat in his final contest.

 

Leonard: The darling of boxing turned professional to the tune of $40,000, casting an envious eye on the more established practitioners. He had the knack of retiring for long periods and coming back against the odds. This charismatic man who faced boxing's best had to tackle his own personal demons outside the ring.

 

Hearns: Not noted as a puncher in the amateur ranks, only to take the professional scene by storm, knocking out almost everyone he faced. He made history by becoming the first five-weight world champion.

 

The Fab Four: Part One takes you from their professional debuts to their title-winning performances. Including Leonard versus Duran and the infamous No Mas rematch. It also chronicles the first epic encounter of Leonard-Hearns in 1981.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lea Worrall
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223844808

Book preview

Introduction

Roberto Durán, Marvin Hagler, Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns were part of the last golden era of boxing. During this time, unlike in today’s climate, the very best faced each other, without worrying about losing their ‘0’ wanting to prove who really was the best. Boxing is littered with fights that should have happened or combatants facing each other well past their primes. In the early nineties we were robbed of Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield at their peaks. Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe, probably the biggest heavyweight title fight of the 1990s, never materialised and Lewis against Holyfield and Tyson happened late in their careers.

Floyd Mayweather Jnr and Manny Pacquiao should have happened in 2008/9, instead of their May 2015 encounter and the likelihood of Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua fighting a meaningful heavyweight championship contest looks to be out of the window, since Tyson Fury stopped Wilder in the seventh round in February 2020. Hopefully, Joshua vs Fury will take place and the world will see a unified heavyweight champion, the first heavyweight to hold all four major belts (WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO) simultaneously. In a period between 1980 to 1989, Durán, Hagler, Leonard and Hearns fought each other on numerous occasions during the decade. Throw Wilfred Benitez into the mix and you have one hell of a boxing era. Though Benitez is considered to be the fifth member of the Fab Four, he didn’t make it as a middleweight and never faced Hagler. If he did, then this book would have been called The Fab Five.

In 1989, I was just getting into boxing. The first fight that caught my imagination was Frank Bruno’s challenge to heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. Though Tyson wasn’t at his best, his speed and power was too much for the British hero and I was hooked on the sport. Unfortunately, I missed out on the peak years of the Four Kings; Hagler retired two years before and Durán, Leonard and Hearns had seen better days.

The first time I watched Leonard and Hearns in action was when ITV did a review of the sport in a Christmas special called Boxing ’89. They spoke about Tyson-Bruno and showed highlights of Benn-Watson, McGuigan-McDonnell, Holyfield-Rodriguez and Tyson-Williams. They also showed extended highlights of Leonard-Hearns II and Leonard-Durán III. I was really looking forward to the next December’s show but to my horror they did Athletics ’90 instead.

In February 1991 I witnessed a Ray Leonard fight in full. His opponent was Terry Norris, the WBC light-middleweight champion. At thirty-four, Leonard was eleven years his opponent’s senior, losing by a wide points decision. The following month I then saw a forty-year-old Durán lose by retirement against the unheralded Pat Lawlor.

Thanks to YouTube you can now watch pretty much any boxing contest you can think of, which has been a useful tool in researching the fights for this book.

1968

Roberto Durán



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Roberto Durán’s veteran trainer, Ray Arcel, once said this of his charge: He’s as decent a man as I’ve ever met. Inside the ring he’s a lion. Outside, he’s a pussycat, a warm, beautiful human being. He also commented on his generosity. When he’s home in Panama, people line up outside his house with their kids and he finds it near impossible to refuse financial help.

In the ring, the dark eyes of Durán would light up when he was inflicting pain and punishment on a hapless victim. His violence in the ring could be attributed to the harsh poverty he grew up in. He was a child of the streets; his neighbours were thieves, whores and murderers.

He was born in Chorillo, a slum on the East side of Panama on 16th June 1951 into the arms of his grandmother, doña Ceferina Garcia. He was given the name Roberto Durán Samaniego. He would later say his mother was late for everything and she never got to the hospital in time. When the contractions started, she stayed at home and he arrived at Casa de Piedra, la Avesida A (no. 147), cuato 96.

Chorillo was a working-class neighbourhood down by the water in Panama City, not too far from the entrance to the Panama Canal. It was a rough country in the 1950s and the government didn’t care too much for education or keeping their citizens safe.

The Panama Canal was causing lots of tension with students demonstrating against the United States and they got into fights with the National Guard. Violence and rioting were in abundance and there was nothing but despair and poverty.

His mother, Clara Esther Samaniego, was Panamanian. His father, Margarito Durán Sanchez, who carried Mexican/Indian heritage, met Clara whilst working as a cook for the US army in the Panama Canal Zone. Clara already had a son, Domingo (Toti) with a Puerto Rican man and a daughter, Marina, with a Filipino.

Margarito fathered another son with Clara, Alicibiades, before being stationed in Arkansas when Roberto was only eighteen months old and he served in the Vietnam war. Young Roberto wouldn’t see his father again until he was a world champion and hardly thought of him during his early days.

Unfortunately for the now fatherless Durán family, Alicibìades, died of heart problems at the age of two. They had no money to eat and had to bury the toddler in a cemetery for the poor with no tombstone.

Durán was often called Cholo due to the Mexican and Indian blood running through his veins. There were no fancy houses in El Chorrillo just wooden tenements, slums and lots of bars. The population consisted mainly of Caribbean immigrants who worked on the construction of the Panama Canal. People would hustle for money by stealing cigarettes and beer from the US Army bases.

Durán didn’t go to school much, he didn’t have to, but when he did, he would just turn up for the breakfast and leave. He was known as a palao, or street kid, and would go home after his school breakfast and get changed, then hit the streets shining shoes to make money.

When he did go to school he would get into fights and get kicked out. As a kid he was more of a wrestler than a boxer, preferring to pin his opponents down to the floor, but just as in the ring, he would never back down. The fights were never his fault, the fifth and sixth graders would pick on the palaos in the first grade and Durán would intervene. He got kicked out of a few schools for his fighting and decided school wasn’t for him and stopped going. Every morning he would leave with his older brother Toti to shine shoes or sell newspapers.

There was nothing for Durán at home. No father and a mother who wasn’t interested in him. She’d get tired of looking after him and sent him one-hundred-and-fifty miles away to Guarare, where his grandmother lived. He had to sit in a truck that transported chickens for the eight-hour journey.

Things were no different for him in Guarare, his grandmother would try and palm him off to family and friends, saying: There’s too many kids and not enough money. There were days when they had to go without food and from an early age the children had to fend for themselves, doing what they could between them to survive.

From the moment he started running the streets he did everything he could to help his mother, Toti and the rest of his siblings. He did anything he could to make money. He’d chop wood and use the money to buy rice. He’d also jump the fence into La Zona, a fancy neighbourhood, to find food in dustbins.

Durán eventually met up with a street performer and hustler named Cándido Natalio Díaz, also known as Chaflán. Everyone believed that Chaflán was crazy, but Durán looked to him as a legend, saying he was a decent guy. Chaflán would go about town wearing a sailor’s hat and dance in the cantinas. There would be between ten to fifteen kids, including Durán, who followed him everywhere. Whilst Chaflán danced and performed his acrobatics, his entourage of young disciples would jostle around him, making faces, hoping the people in attendance would throw them their loose change.

Spending time with Chaflán would develop the strength in Durán’s arms. He would stand on his hands and do flips in the air, performing tricks in the hope passersby would throw him a dime or two. Sometimes when they made enough money, Chaflán would take his followers to the beach and buy them lunch.

Durán and Toti would also go to a place called Calle Gota and shine shoes. He claims it was here he learned his first English phrase shoeshine to hustle a quarter or a dime from the gringos (Americans).

His brother would stand watch and call cops if the police showed up. Sometimes they’d get caught, spend the night in jail and go to juvenile court, only to do the same thing once released.

Durán would give the money he earned to his mother to feed the many mouths in his household. Sometimes he would use some of the money to do what he loved – going to the cinema, or light candles in his local church, Iglesia de Ana, for his siblings, asking the saints to protect them.

He would also sell newspapers and would sometimes work in a store cutting ice and distribute it. When he wasn’t shining shoes and selling papers, he and Toti would wake up at 5 am and wait for the market to open to help the frail and elderly with their bags. Once full they’d take the bags to their cars or homes and receive tips for their help.

Durán was a massive movie fan and would often go to the cinema at 1 pm when it opened. It cost him twenty-five cents for admission and after the first screening he would ask the person in the box office if he could go out. He would go to the nearby restaurants to beg for bread and water, which they’d give for free. He’d return to the cinema with the bread in a bag and watch another screening.

There was also a pool popular with the palaos and one day he jumped in to cool off. At the time there was a practice for a swimming gala. Durán couldn’t swim and he had to be rescued by one of the lifeguards, who then subsequently kicked him out of the premises. Durán would go to the beach to learn to swim. When he eventually returned to the pool he told the owner, Señor Toto, he was ready to compete.

Durán was put in the middle lane, jumping straight in once the starter gun was fired. His main competitor was a bigger lad who tied with him. Señor Toto was so impressed that he told him he could practise every day. Durán wasn’t interested, he just wanted to show the owner he could win if he wanted.

At the age of eleven/twelve, Durán and Toti had found work at the Roosevelt Hotel, owned by Jose Manuel Gomez, doing odd jobs. Toti was staying at the hotel, living in the storage facility and asked Durán to move in with him. The hotel was popular with Americans, especially soldiers and they worked in the maintenance department, fixing up the building and doing the jobs nobody wanted to do like throwing out the rubbish. Gomez took a shine to Durán and put him on repairing chairs, cleaning the toilets, painting walls, sweeping floors and litter picking.

La Zona, the exclusive district where the rich Panamanians and Americans resided, was a perfect spot for mangoes to grow. La Zona was a restricted area, only workers with permits were allowed there. Durán and Toti were breaking the law and were at risk of getting arrested for trespassing, but there were no mangoes in El Chorrillo.

They’d have to go three at a time, cutting through fences to get at the best mangoes. Some kids would stay at the fences to look out for the police. Durán had to swim two miles across the Panama Canal with a knife between his teeth to get to the plantation. Once they loaded up, they had to swim the two miles back with the sacks floating either side of them.

Sometimes on their return to El Chorrillo, they would get jumped by the older kids and have their produce stolen. If they avoided the older kids, they’d sell the mangoes and buy food for the household. Durán once got arrested on one of his raids of the plantation and when his mother came to bail him, the police decided she was too poor and gave her $5, a fortune back then. Every time Durán got arrested the family would receive $5.

Another way the brothers would make money was from the nearby shooting range, called Tiro Al Blanco. The gringos practised their shooting and Durán and Toti would collect the lead shells. The shells weighed a ton, receiving $6-7 for them.

They also delivered ice on a cart and at Christmas they could make as much as $20, as more people wanted more ice for their drinks. Durán did everything he could to help his mother financially, who now had eight children.

Three years after his father left, Clara met Victorino Vargas, fell in love and had five children with him – Victor, Armando (Pototo), Chavela, Nevala and Niami. His stepfather was a musician and played guitar for a band called Sindo Lopez.

His mother found work as a babysitter, which was forty minutes away. Sometimes Durán would go with her and shine shoes outside a nearby restaurant as she took the children to the park. Clara would eventually get fired from babysitting as she wasn’t very good at it.

Toti was a boxer before Durán and trained at the old Neco de La Guardia Gym. Roberto, come with me, he said to his eight-year-old brother.

Durán waited in the stands as Toti got changed. When he emerged in his trunks and robe, a professional bantamweight boxer named Adolfo Osses asked Toti to help him train. He watched the trainer put the headgear and protective cup on his brother. He was mesmerised and after the sparring session asked Toti how he could get that stuff. Become a boxer, was his reply.

So that’s what he did. Durán trained every day; the only problem was he only weighed 84 pounds (38.10 Kg) and nobody wanted to work with him. Everyone thought he was too short, too light and too young.

Finally, aged thirteen, the eager Durán got his chance to climb into the squared circle. He went to his brother’s weigh-in, where someone didn’t show up for a 105 pounds (47.63 Kg) contest. I’ll fight.

Durán’s trainer put a rock in each of his shorts’ pockets and he weighed in at 100 pounds (45.36 Kg). His opponent was more experienced, having five or six bouts and Toti didn’t want his little brother to fight. Durán wasn’t concerned, he’d had enough of just hitting the heavy bag and wanted to get in the ring to prove his worth.

He ended up losing his debut on points, insisting the judges were related to his opponent. He also lost his next two fights, with the opposition coming from El Marañón Gym, who often would bring their best fighters. For each fight Durán received $3. A dollar would go to his trainer and he gave $1.50 to his mother, keeping the fifty cents for a trip to the movies. With the money he was earning from his bouts he gave up selling newspapers and shoe shining.

He wanted better competition and joined El Marañón Gym with Toti. Durán trained by himself and it was here he met Néstor Quiñones. Still only thirteen, Durán asked Quiñones, who he referred to as Plomo, if he’d become his trainer. It was a partnership and friendship that would last all through Durán’s career and beyond.

Though his brother got him into boxing, he worshiped Panama’s Ismael Laguna. ‘El Tigre Colonese’ won the national featherweight crown in 1962. When Durán first started to box, it was Laguna he wanted to emulate. He first saw his idol fight in April 1965 when he challenged Carlos Ortiz for the WBA and WBC lightweight titles.

The fourteen-year-old travelled to Panama City’s Estadio Nacional on the back of a cattle truck. He had no money and waited until they opened the gates and the people there rushed in to watch the final three rounds. The teenager got to his ringside position as the penultimate round finished.

Durán was totally in awe at the whole spectacle and recalls the trainer giving Laguna instructions. Hit him with a jab. Left hook! Counterpunch! Durán knew exactly what he wanted to become.

Laguna won, receiving a giant trophy. Durán followed the new champion of the world out to his car and when it drove off, he looked to the sky, telling himself he would become like him – no bigger than Laguna.

By the time Durán was sixteen he was training with his ring hero. They sparred and the adolescent wasn’t overawed. He knew exactly what he was doing around the ring and more importantly he knew what Laguna was going to do. Durán learned how to fight on the inside, plus he knew fight strategy very well, teaching himself how to cut off the ring. Though he was comfortable inside the ropes, he was still a street fighter at heart.

After a shaky start to his amateur career, Durán got some big scalps on his record. He beat Catalino Alvarado, considered one of Panama’s top fighters. He also knocked out Buenaventura Riasco, a solid fighter from one of the best boxing clubs in Panama. He believed he was going to represent his country in the Pan-American Games in 1967 held in Winnipeg, Canada. Before that he was also set to compete in a Golden Gloves qualifying tournament.

Before the event he fell sick, saying he ate something from a street vendor as they were fumigating the street, believing something had gotten into his food. Quiñones told him to take a couple of Alka Seltzers and it will go away.

To Durán’s horror he was drawn against the top two fighters in his division. They were trained by the police and at the time the Police Department had the best boxers. Durán beat them both and expected to go to Winnipeg, only to be informed by one of the colonels someone else would be going instead. Durán protested, backing down when he was threatened with jail.

Durán was gutted and wasn’t interested in continuing his amateur career. Quiñones offered him a pro fight, which Durán turned down, until he realised he was getting paid $25 for his effort…

23rd February: Roberto Durán’s first opponent was fellow Panamanian Carlos Mendoza, who was looking to go 2-0. Durán’s preparations for his professional bow were not the best, breaking his hand whilst hitting the heavy bag in training. The Colón doctor refused him permission to fight. Please let me. I need to, for my mother, I need to put food on the table, Durán pleaded and the doctor eventually gave in.

Durán, weighing 118 pounds (52.62 Kg), met up with Quiñones for a pre-fight meal of salad and steak. This would become a ritual throughout the sixteen-year-old’s career.

The bantamweights faced off at the Arena de Colón in Colón City and went the full four-round distance, with Durán coming out on top, 40-36 on all three judges cards. Mendoza, who was fighting in front of his fans, later became a fighter of note, challenging WBC super-bantamweight champion Wilfredo Gomez in September 1978, losing by a tenth round TKO.

Not long after the Mendoza contest, Durán’s first manager, Alfredo Vázquez, a Panamanian jockey, realised that borrowing money from friends wouldn’t steer Durán in the right direction. He sold his fighter’s contract to Carlos Eleta for $300.

Eleta, an ex-tennis player and a millionaire racehorse owner, had an eye for spotting raw talent and was influential in Latin American sport. He owned the TV station Canal Cuarto and some distribution companies around Panama.

He recognised Durán straight away as the boy he caught stealing coconuts from his tree four years previously. He gave Durán $20 as a joining bonus and they shook hands, never signing a contract. Eleta would deal with the money side and Durán would just get in the ring and fight.

Durán’s and Eleta’s working relationship didn’t get off to the best of starts. One night, Durán and his mother were walking back from the restaurant she liked to dance at. They came across two women arguing. Durán intervened trying to calm the situation down, when some man jumps on his back.

Using his wrestling experience to get him off, Durán punched him and broke his jaw. The man he hit turned out to be a policeman and lied to the judge, saying the sixteen-year-old sucker punched him. Durán ended up in jail, not for juveniles but Carcel Modelo – a man’s prison.

Durán was made to do chores like sweeping the floor and looking after the police horses. On his third day of incarceration, Durán was sweeping the yard when an officer asked him why he was there. The teenager explained and the officer promised to investigate. Thirty minutes later he was released.

Carlos Eleta knew his charge was in prison, deciding against bailing his fighter out. I wanted to teach you a lesson, so you don’t do things like that. Durán took the words on board, realising he needed his manager to get him to be world champion.

14th May: Returning to the city of Colón, Durán stepped up to the super-bantamweight division and registered his first knockout victory against another fellow countryman Juan Gondola. The fight was stopped in the first round as Durán went 2-0.

15th June: Debutant Manuel Jimenez, hailing from the Dominican Republic didn’t put up much of a contest, getting overpowered in a round.

30th June: Now campaigning as a featherweight, Durán faced debutante Eduardo Morales. Though Morales lost by knockout, he did slightly better than Gondola and Jimenez, lasting the full three minutes of the first round. The experience must have been too much for Morales as