{"id":626444,"date":"2026-06-07T19:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/626444\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T19:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:43:08","slug":"roberto-duran-says-he-never-should-have-fought-one-fight-that-was-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/626444\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Duran says he never should have fought one fight: “That was bad”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roberto Duran<\/a> believes he was coerced by his manager to take an unfavourable fight, shortly after sustaining major injuries from a car accident.<\/p>\n

The Hall of Famer is perhaps best known for his encounters with Marvin Hagler<\/a>, Sugar Ray Leonard<\/a> and Thomas Hearns, who he fought above his natural weight class of 135lbs.<\/p>\n

Against Leonard, he managed to claim the WBC welterweight title with a unanimous decision victory in 1980<\/a>, before losing their rematch via an eighth-round stoppage later that year.<\/p>\n

Duran then faced Hagler and Hearns at middleweight and super-welterweight, respectively, only to suffer back-to-back defeats against his fellow greats in 1983 and 1984.<\/p>\n

It was down at lightweight, however, where the Panamanian particularly excelled, claiming his first world title with a controversial 13th-round stoppage of Ken Buchanan<\/a> in 1972.<\/p>\n

Duran then made a pair of WBA title defences before suffering his first defeat against Esteban de Jesus<\/a>, who dropped and outpointed \u2018Hands of Stone\u2019 the same year he won the belt.<\/p>\n

While speaking with One On One Boxing<\/a>, though, Duran explained that his manager, Carlos Eleta, is the one to blame for him losing a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was bad \u2013 I\u2019ll tell you why. Carlos Eleta shouldn\u2019t have taken that fight, because I was in a car accident. I broke my [arm] and my mouth was smashed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that Carlos Eleta just wanted money out of Roberto Duran. I still had a swelling and bleeding in my mouth, and my elbow was broken. I still have a hole here [points to right elbow].<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only good thing Esteban de Jesus did was drop me. When he dropped me, I stood up and won the fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey gave it to him because, back then, and even today in [Madison Square Garden, New York], the Puerto Ricans are in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Duran\u2019s idea of a Puerto Rican advantage in New York is perhaps far-fetched, he is nonetheless correct in saying that Esteban was unable to defeat a fully-fit version of himself.<\/p>\n

This was proven by an 11th-round stoppage victory in their rematch two years later, and further evidenced by Duran\u2019s 12th-round triumph over Esteban<\/a> in 1978.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roberto Duran believes he was coerced by his manager to take an unfavourable fight, shortly after sustaining major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-626444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}