Panama's Duran 'Real Nice Man'; 
Duran 'Nice Man' and National Idol 

By Dave Kindred 

LIBERTY, N.Y., June 5, 1980 

   Get a taxi at the Panama City airport. Tell the
driver, "Take me to Roberto's." The driver won't need
a last name. There is only one Roberto in Panama.
Neither will the driver need directions. Everyone in
Panama City knows where Roberto lives. At the house,
you can knock on the door and ask for Roberto. Roberto
Duran will invite you in. 

"Roberto is the most popular panamanian that ever
lived," said Ruben Blades, the fighter's friend and a
singer-lyricist who is to music in Panama what Duran
is to prize fighting. 

We can see only Duran the Dark. Duran with the scruffy
black beard and raven black hair. Duran with the
chilling, leopard's eyes burning under a brow of
menace. 

Sugar Ray Leonard comes to the June 20 welterweight
championship fight in Montreal as America's darling,
the Olympic hero who grades 97 on every charm test. We
see Duran as evil. Because America needs villians to
make its heroes more heroic . . . because we don't
take to dark foreigners who speak a strange language .
. . because Duran's fury in the ring is undisguised
rather than hidden by the smiles of a Sugar Ray --
maybe for all these reasons, we see Roberto Duran as
an animal. We owe him more than that. 

"He's a nice man, a real nice man," said Blades, 32,
who has known Duran 15 years. 

"It is too bad Roberto does not speak English.
Americans would love him. He is a natural wit. Next to
Roberto, Ali is nothing in saying funny things. And he
is genuine and real. 

"He is what I would categorize as a knowledgeable
innocent," Blades said. "All the fame and money have
not changed him, and that is why Panamanians love him.
They have respect for his innocence. 

"You go to his house, there he'll be in his shorts. It
is not a plastic thing, Roberto's life. It is amazing.
The more attention he gets, the less complicated he
gets.He is very, very close with all his relatives. He
doesn't travel with people who want to make him feel
great by saying, 'Yes, yes, yes, Roberto,' all the
time building up his ego. He doesn't need them or want
them. 

"When he wins a fight, he goes back to Panama. They
make him a party. That's all. Then he goes with his
wife and four children to the interior or to the beach
or to a movie. Nothing glamorous." 

The second of nine children of a Mexican father and
Panamanian mother, Duran lived on the streets of
Chorillo, Panama, a runaway who quit home and school
at 14 to shine shoes, dance on the corners for nickels
and dimes, and catch fish in the dirty water at
street's edge. Armed with a survivor's angry
instincts, he first fought for money at 16. Five years
and 28 pro fights later, Roberto Duran was the world's
lightweight champion. He held the title six years
through 12 defenses before abdicating to move to the
welterweight division, up from a 135-pound limit to
147. 

He once stole coconuts from the farm of Carlos Eleta.
Eleta became his manager a decade later and helped
Duran make enough money that he now owns a grand home,
two apartment buildings and five cars. He could make
as much as $5 million from this championship fight. At
29, he has three or four big money years left. 

"Roberto had very humble beginnings," Blades said.
"The stories about him being raised on the streets,
they are not cliches. They are all true. He lived with
some family. Not his family. It was very rough and he
has come a long way." 

The people of Panama share Duran's great success,
Blades said. "It is not like America, where everyone
is on the make and wants to take success from a star.
If John Wayne whose movies were big in Panama, had
walked down the street, people would have said. 'There
goes tall John Wayne,'" Blades said. "But they would
not abuse him. People don't bother you. You are part
of the city. We admire, but we don't crowd. Roberto is
one of the people, nothing else, who made it -- and
that means they have made it. They are happy for him
and with him." 

Roberto Duran, this supposed prince of darkness, this
real man, is a dominoes player. 

And a softball player. 

And a bongos player. 

"He sings, too," Blades, the singer, said. 

Does Duran sing well? 

"He is a very good dominoes player," Blades said,
laughing. "I made an album and on the cover I dressed
like a boxer. Roberto asked me, 'Why in hell are you
wearing 18-ounce gloves? Why do you have on those
horrible pants? Who are you to play a boxer?' 

"So I asked him, 'Can you sing?' 

"He said nothing then." 

Oh, yes, another thing about Roberto Duran, the man. 

He keeps a lion in his backyard. 

"This high, the lion is," Blades said. He held his
hand waist high. 

There was a pause in the action while people thought
of lion-in-the-backyard questions. 

"Roberto's had this lion since it was like a puppy,"
Blades said. "You go to his house and the house will
be full of people playing cards and dominoes and
music. And there will be babies walking around. All
with the lion right there." 

Blades said he just thought of something. 

"Roberto is the only one who can handle the lion," he
said. "So with Roberto gone from home so long now,
who's walking the lion?"