‘No Mas’ Still Baffles Experts : Boxing: More than nine years later, his walking away from Sugar Ray Leonard in the eighth round in New Orleans remains out of sport’s enduring mysteries.

Ray Arcel, 90, started training boxers in 1917, in New York’s East Harlem and says that in his 65-year career, he has seen three naturals.

“I rank Roberto Duran with two other guys who were naturals, guys who never had to be taught a thing about how to box--Sugar Ray Robinson and Harry Greb,” Arcel said from his New York home.

“Oh, I’d occasionally point out something Roberto wasn’t doing correctly, but it was always a little thing, certainly nothing fundamental. The man was born knowing how to fight. He’s an amazing man, really--I don’t believe I ever saw a fighter who had the ability to snap out of trouble so quickly when things began to go against him.”

Wait a minute, Ray. What about the way he snapped out of trouble in New Orleans, in 1980? What about “No Mas.”

“It’s a mystery to me to this day, and I think it’s a mystery to Roberto, too,” Arcel said, of Leonard-Duran II, when Duran abruptly quit in the eighth round, saying only, “No mas,” to the referee.

Nine years later, as they prepare to fight Thursday in a nostalgia exercise the boxing world still gropes to identify whatever demon seized Roberto Duran that night in New Orleans. “I’m still shocked by it,” Arcel said. “Anyone but him. My God, here is a man who if you walked up to him on the street and hit him, he’d kill you. But it happened. He just quit. He hurt so many people that night, so many people who’d worked so hard in his camp.

“I never pressed him about it--he said his stomach hurt. But in my own mind I think part of the reason had to do with the fact Ray was clowning a lot, sticking out his chin at him and such, taunting him, and making Roberto look a little foolish. Possibly, on the spur of the moment, it was his way of saying: ‘To hell with you.’ ”

Duran has promised to tell why he quit in that fight after the rematch Thursday, win or lose.

Until then, it remains one of sports’ fascinating mysteries.

Alex Wallau, boxing historian, was an ABC producer on that night in 1980. The network had rights to the delayed telecast and Wallau got permission from Duran to talk to the doctor who had examined him after the fight.

“The doctor told me he absolutely had a severely distended stomach,” Wallau said. “But even so, I still consider it the most disgraceful sports episode of our time, considering it came from a man known for courage and ferocity.

“On the other hand, when he beat Leonard in Montreal (earlier that same year), I still consider that one of the great sports achievments of the 1980s--to have moved up one full weight class and defeated a great champion who was in his prime and who hasn’t lost since.”

Tony Rivera of Montebello has been a camp coordinator for Duran for years.

“Roberto told me he had stomach cramps that night, that he was cramping up every time he raised his arms,” Rivera said. “That was good enough for me. Why can’t people accept it?”

Mike Trainer, Sugar Ray Leonard’s lawyer, subscribes to the theory that Duran, had he seen the judges’ scorecards that night, would have fought on. According to that theory, held by many, Duran believed that being made to look foolish by Leonard was as shameful as losing.

“Go back and look at the tape of that fight,” Trainer said. “I have, and I’m hard-pressed to find two rounds that Duran won. Yet the judges had it just about even. If Duran had seen the cards, he’d never have no mas- sed it.”

Two judges had Leonard by two points and the third by one when Duran bailed out.

From no mas to Uno Mas, promoter Bob Arum’s theme for Leonard-Duran III, Duran has traveled a twisted road.

The day after no mas, Duran flew to Miami, where he remained hidden for a week, one of history’s great fighters in disgrace. Soon, though, he began the long road back to redemption. He has had ups and downs since, and the first important win on the way back was a knockout of Pipino Cuevas in Los Angeles.

Then Duran knocked out favored Davey Moore in a World Boxing Assn. junior-middleweight championship fight in 1983, giving the former lightweight and welterweight champion him his third world championship.

Later that same year, as an underdog again, he was even on points with Marvelous Marvin Hagler after 13 rounds, but lost a close decision. In the summer of 1984, Duran was knocked out for the first time in his career, by Thomas Hearns at Caesars Palace.

This, it seemed, was the end. Hearns had caught Duran with a smashing right in the second round and knocked Duran into unconsciousness.

Duran was inactive in 1985, knocked out a couple of nobodies in Panama City in 1986, but then lost a 10-round decision to Robbie Sims in late 1986, probably the low point in his quest for a rematch with Leonard.

In 1987, Duran was living in Miami and volunteered to box, at 204 pounds, in an exhibition bout at a benefit for former welterweight champion Kid Gavilan. There, he met a young promoter from Erie, Pa., named Mike Acri, who, with his partner, Luis deCubas, promoted several Duran fights in Miami Beach and Atlantic City against journeymen.

“During that period, what we needed was a lucky break, because Roberto did not look good against these guys,” Acri recalled Monday. “We took him to Chicago to fight Jeff Lanas and he won a decision, but he looked horrible. The thing is, Roberto fights up to the level of his opponent. The ability, the skills were there, we could see that, but we needed to get him a quality opponent.”

Then a gift appeared.

Iran Barkley had upset Hearns for the World Boxing Council middleweight title, but his manager was angry about offers made to him for a Hearns rematch. He began looking for any name opponent with whom Barkley could make a decent payday . . . someone like Roberto Duran.

Last February, in Atlantic City, in one of the memorable fights of the 1980s, Duran brought it all back--all the fury, the savagery, the intensity that first thrilled American television audiences in the early 1970s.

True, he didn’t look much like a lightweight anymore. But he wasn’t a washed up Panamanian pug, either. He willed himself to be a champion again. Duran beat Barkley on a decision, winning another title and $265,000.

Four months later, Leonard fought to a draw with Hearns, preserving Leonard-Duran III.

And finally, an opportunity to regain respect.

At a news conference Monday, after a workout that drew about 1,000 spectators in a Mirage Hotel ballroom, someone asked the inevitable question, and Duran bristled.

“Since New Orleans, I have won two world championships, I have fought more champions than anyone, and that’s all you can ask?” he said, through an interpreter.

“I don’t know why Leonard made me wait 9 1/2 years for this, but now I will make him pay.”

But the hatred he freely expressed for Leonard in Montreal and New Orleans is gone now, he said--at least until Thursday.

That old evil grin came to his face, and he said: “Leonard is my friend. But on Thursday, he won’t be my friend.”

He said it, of course, in front of TV cameras and a couple of hundred reporters. On Saturday, in fractured English, he had said to old friend Chris Dundee: “Leonard no win this time. This time I kill him.”