“I AM not God, but I am something similar.”

These words were once spoken by Panamanian legend Roberto Duran, whose ring name Hands of Stone captured the primal character of a man who faced nothing in the ring that ever came close to what he faced out of it. 

Having just defeated his latest and perhaps most deadly opponent, Covid-19, Duran is a man for whom the label ATG (all-time great) most accurately applies — who even in his most humiliating moment — his “no mas” surrender to Sugar Ray Leonard in their 1976 rematch in New Orleans — retained an aura of dignity consonant with the struggle for survival and to escape the grinding poverty from whence he had come.

Born on June 16 1951 in the El Chorrillo slums of Panama City, Duran’s introduction to boxing came early when at eight years old he began sparring with older more experienced boys at the Neco de la Guardia boxing gym. 

With poverty a constant companion, he turned professional at just 16 and from there won his first 31 fights, blazing a trail all the way from Panama to New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1972, when he defeated an in-prime Ken Buchanan to win his first world title at lightweight.

The one knockout that isn’t recorded on Duran’s record involves the horse he is said to have knocked down with one punch at a fairground in Panama City when he was 15, in return for a bottle of whisky. In a famous 1980 profile of the Panamanian when he was in New York training for his first clash with Leonard, Vic Ziegel reveals the following encounter with Duran:

“Did he knock the horse down with one punch?”

“Si. One punch,” Duran’s translator replied.

“How old was he?”

“Fifteen years old.”

“How old was the horse?”

“He [Duran] say, ask the horse.”

Along with Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, Marvellous Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, Duran was part of the legendary and golden age clutch of middle and welterweight champions known as the Four Horsemen. From the mid 1970s to the late-80s they provided boxing with some of its most iconic fights and moments. 

Their legendary status as fighters was matched by the legendary trainers each had in their respective corners while in their prime. 

Duran benefited from the sure hand of Ray Arcel, Hearns enjoyed the expertise of the Kronk Gym’s Emmanuel Steward, Hagler was guided by the Petronelli brothers, while Leonard had none other than Angelo Dundee by his side. 

More than trainers, these men were teachers not trainers — boxing philosophers even — whose combined knowledge of the sweet science deserves to be recorded and etched in stone.

In a 1994 obituary of Duran’s famed trainer Arcel, Jerry Izenberg lays out the impact he had on the Panamanian in his formative years, prior to that pivotal 1972 encounter with Scotland’s Buchanan. “He [Arcel] had taken a wild puncher and taught him how to box — box as no lightweight had for decades — without yielding an inch of his punching power. Duran’s English was non-existent back then. Arcel had no Spanish at all. But he was a teacher’s teacher and he outlined the perfect fight.”

More powerfully, Izenberg describes the aftermath of the Leonard rematch in New Orleans, when the Louisiana Boxing Commission called Arcel to a meeting to consider suspending Duran for quitting in the eighth round.

Arcel: “I don’t know what happened tonight. But I know how Roberto Duran began in life and I know what he willed himself to become. I know the honour he has brought this business, which sometimes doesn’t deserve it. I know his pride. And I know you cannot do a thing like this. He deserves better, and if you don’t understand that and do this to him you will wake up tomorrow and you will be ashamed.”

Hollywood got around to celebrating Duran’s life with the biopic, Hands of Stone, in 2016. Starring Edgar Ramirez as Duran and Robert De Niro as Arcel, as with most boxing biopics it failed to encapsulate the intensity of the man either in and out of the ring. 

De Niro — whose role as Jake La Motta in the 1980 biopic Raging Bull, counts as one of his best — did though succeed in capturing the love which Arcel had for Duran and his calming influence on him at key moments in his career.

This however clearly wasn’t enough for the likes of Jordan Hoffman, whose review in the Guardian remains the journalistic equivalent of middle-class masturbation. Example: “Niro intones the lazy argument that boxing is, in fact, an art.” 

Or how about this gem: “Arcel has his own issues. A virtuous man driven only a by a pure love of this noble sport (you know, dudes in their underwear giving each other concussion).”

In an age when a pro career consisting of 40 fights is considered long, Duran fought an astonishing 119 times in a career which spanned four decades between 1969 and 2001, losing his last fight to Hector Camacho by unanimous decision. 

He maintains that he would have had even more fights if not for the serious car accident he was involved in in Buenos Aires which almost cost him his life five months after fighting Camacho.

A mercurial Latin temperament married to national and personal pride, Duran enjoys a special place in boxing history as a fighter whose hunger for success saw him fight like a savage beast that hadn’t eaten in days. Still today he enjoys the status of cultural and sporting icon in Panama, and still today even a virus is unable to quench the man’s will and fighting spirit.

As Gerry Cooney said of him: “Roberto Duran was the kind of guy who was a true fighter and you hardly see guys like that anymore.”