Leonard’s One-Sided Win Has a Dark Side

Sugar Ray Leonard walked into the room wearing sunglasses. They covered most of the 60 stitches he received after his one-sided, unanimous decision over Roberto Duran.

Leonard, 33, showed against a clearly aged Duran, 38, that he still had his hand and foot speed. He gave a textbook demonstration of boxing. But he did not pitch the “no-hitter” that his camp claimed.

Leonard needed 20 stitches to close a cut in his left eyelid from a Duran right hand in the 11th round. He needed 30 stitches for a gash in his right eyebrow suffered when he was caught by Duran in the 12th and final round. It took 10 stitches to close a cut upper lip that he got early in the fight from a butt.

Yet at a news conference Friday morning Leonard brushed off the damage, including that to the left eye, which had been operated on for a detached retina in May 1982. “Hell,” he said, “it’s nothing that a little makeup won’t help.”

Leonard defended his hit-and-run style that amassed points but turned many in the crowd of 16,000 sour and reduced Duran to a mere shadowboxer able to land only 84 blows, a mere 14 percent of his punches. Ironically, Duran drew more blood from Leonard than any other fighter ever has.

Leonard said that he would have his eyes examined after he returns home but that was nothing more than after any fight. Still, he admitted that the blow to his left eye had been significant. “It was a pretty nasty cut,” he said. “The blood was flowing.”

This was only the second time Leonard had to be taken to a hospital after a fight. The other time was after he stopped Wilfred Benitez in the 15th round in 1979, and that was for exhaustion.

Leonard said that it was “going to take a while” before he decided whether to continue his career. “I’m not even thinking about it yet,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy the holidays. I’ll just wait ‘til the first of the year and see what’s on my agenda.”

But at least today he said that the cuts he received would have “no effect” on his decision.

Rather, he went on, it depended on what was “in his heart.”

Leonard said he could have fought the fight untouched and that it was when he tried to “accommodate” the crowd that he moved inside and was cut by Duran’s right hand in the 11th. “The only time I suffered cuts,” he said, “was when I tried to accommodate the public’s demand and fight inside.”

Back on his bicycle in the 12th, Leonard was again caught by Duran with about 50 seconds left. “It was a left hook,” said Leonard, “but the collision of heads didn’t help.”

By the fourth round he was bleeding freely from his lip, which Duran butted. That cut bled for several rounds, but it was more of an annoyance than anything. The only threat from Duran came in the 11th and 12th. His corner urged him on, but Leonard was moving faster than ever by then and his outstanding physical condition enabled him to keep away.

The three judges’ scoring (119-109, 116-111, 120-110) was hardly necessary. Leonard, everyone knew, had retained his World Boxing Council super middleweight title -- for what that’s worth to him. It simply was a meeting of personalities, not a fight when many were talking about a title to be won or lost.

Clearly, Duran is finished. Leonard toyed with him most of the fight, taking advantage of a seven-inch reach advantage. Leonard has more trouble with Thomas Hearns for one reason -- Hearns has a four-inch reach on Leonard. That, at least in the mind of promoter Bob Arum, left Leonard-Hearns III as the next best possibility should Leonard elect to go on.

Leonard-Marvin Hagler also would be a possibility, Arum said, if Hagler were to come out of retirement. “But Hagler talks in riddles,” said Arum.

A fight between Leonard and International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Michael Nunn could not be sold, Arum said, because the styles of both would make a poor fight.

“A Leonard-Duran fight with Leonard in front of Duran would have been interesting,” Arum said, “but Leonard still has his speed.”

From the outset Leonard set the tempo. His eyes widened when he saw he could score with his jab almost at will. Occasionally he’d dig hooks to the head and body that hurt Duran but never stopped him from plodding forward.

In the third round Leonard threatened to turn “uno mas” into another New Orleans of 1980 when a humiliated Duran quit in the ring. Dominating the early going, Leonard taunted Duran, threatening a bolo punch and smiling.

In the sixth Leonard trapped Duran in Duran’s corner and pounded away. As Duran extricated himself, Leonard tagged him with a hook that shook Duran’s jaw. But Duran withstood the attack. “That’s experience,” said Leonard. “And he has a good chin.”

Duran’s defenses weakened as the fight went on. Leonard nailed him with a solid combination in the eighth round, and late in the ninth backed Duran half way across the ring. The only difference between this fight and “no mas” was that Duran was sticking around for the finish.

Then came the one stroke that could have made Duran a winner-the cut eye in the 11th. But Leonard credited his trainer, Jose “Pepe” Correa, for getting him into condition to survive the late crisis.

“Not since the Hearns fight in ’81 did I allow someone to train me the way he did,” said Leonard. “Sometimes a champion gets to thinking that he knows it all. But I put myself in his hands. It required me to be a student.”

Both Leonard and Correa emphasized that Leonard’s closed training sessions enabled him to be in superb condition. Further, Leonard carried out their plan almost perfectly, circling to the right -- away from Duran’s right -- and keeping on the move.

While his taunts of Duran were “spontaneous” in New Orleans, Leonard said they were planned here, although they weren’t as frequent.

“I’m sure it reminded him,” said Leonard.

Afterward, Duran complained about Leonard’s reluctance to make himself available to be hit. But he had no argument; he simply doesn’t match up with Leonard and is too far over the hill.

It was a chilly night, 51 degrees at the beginning of the fight. But Leonard came prepared. He wore a black wool cap into the ring and used a hotel blanket to keep warm between rounds. The cold was a problem for him, but only in the first minute and a half when he tried to get unlimbered.

“Pepe was saying, ‘double jab,’ but I was afraid to throw two jabs because Duran could counter.”

But then Leonard warmed to the task, his confidence ever increasing. He realized, he said, that “Sugar Ray Leonard” and not just “Ray Leonard” was in the ring. The difference?

“Ray Leonard is more conservative,” he said. “Sugar Ray Leonard is a risk-taker. He goes for it all when some say he’s over the hill, it’s gone. It’s still there.”

He went home with the conviction he was still a champion. But he was wearing those sunglasses and his lip was puffed and, most significantly, he was carrying the incredible number of stitches that he never had before.

He had every reason to think a long, long time before deciding ever to fight again.