After scoring the biggest win of his career, de Jesús went on to post a pair of decisions over contender Ray Lampkin and a knockout over former super-lightweight champion Alfonso “Peppermint” Frazer. Durán, meanwhile, released his raw fury in successful title defenses against Jimmy Robertson, Hector Thompson, and Guts Ishimatsu. It took a career-high payday of $125,000 to lure him into a rematch against de Jesús—this time in Panama.
On March 16, 1974, de Jesús and Durán squared off before nearly sixteen thousand spectators at the Gimnasio Nuevo Panama in Panama City, where the dry season guaranteed temperatures of over one hundred degrees at ringside. After a grueling struggle to make weight, de Jesús was so drained that Gregorio Benitez tried to postpone the fight under the pretext of a cut de Jesús suffered in sparring. A $40,000 purse convinced de Jesús to enter the ring under unfavorable circumstances. For his part, Durán was training harder than ever before. Not only was he scheduled to face the only man who had ever beaten him, he was also worried about supernatural forces. Even for boxing, with its near-surrealist air, such a concern seemed beyond the pale. According to Christian Giudice, de Jesús had gathered warlocks in his camp in order to hex Durán.
If de Jesús was worried about the inferno-like conditions, he seemed oblivious to them when the opening bell rang. Both men forced a torrid pace in the dizzying heat. Durán, well prepared for his only conqueror, fought with the trademark frenetic style he had been unable to muster in the first bout. Still, de Jesús seemed ready for the onslaught, and for the second time in as many fights, he toppled Durán with a lashing hook barely a minute into the first round. For Durán, who jumped to his feet quickly, the possibility of having been the victim of bad juju must have seemed all too real as he took the mandatory eight-count.
From that point on, Durán and de Jesús—the best lightweights in the world—warred toe-to-toe until one of them began to wilt. It was de Jesús who succumbed. With less than a minute remaining in the seventh round, a clubbing right hand dropped de Jesús to his knees. He beat the count but took more punishment over the next few rounds, and at the end of the tenth, he told Benitez that he could go no further. Unmoved, Benitez pushed de Jesús out of the corner for one last stand, which lasted less than thirty seconds. Sensing the kill, Durán moved in on a wobbly de Jesús with both hands churning. A looping right sent an exhausted de Jesús crashing to the canvas, where he took the full count on his knees.
Although de Jesús had absorbed a beating from Durán (as well as one from Antonio Cervantes in losing a decision for the WBA super-lightweight title in May 1975), he rebounded by outpointing Guts Ishimatsu for the WBC lightweight title in Bayamon in May 1976. In winning the WBC championship, de Jesús became part of a unique geographic renaissance. From 1975 to 1978, Puerto Rico, an island with the population of Wales at the time, produced a slew of world champions, including Angel Espada, Sammy Serrano, Wilfred Benitez, Alfredo Escalera, and Wilfredo Gomez. Before Gomez skyrocketed to the kind of fame that bordered on religious mania in the late 1970s, it was de Jesús who captured the imagination of Puerto Rico. During that era, Wilfred Benitez was recognized for his eccentricity as much as he was for his precocious ability, and Alfredo Escalera, although popular, was admired chiefly for a crowd-pleasing style emphasized by his habit of carrying a snake into the ring with him. De Jesús, on the other hand, exuded class. His neat counterpunching style, mixed with nimble footwork and an accurate jab, was the blueprint from which Gomez and future champions such as Edwin Rosario and Victor Callejas plotted their own nifty moves.
De Jesús defended his WBC title three times in Bayamon, turning back Hector Julio Medina, Buzzsaw Yamabe, and Vincent Mijares—all by stoppage. Finally, nearly four years after their last meeting, the scene was set for de Jesús and Durán to renew their hostilities, this time for the undisputed lightweight championship. A few months after beating de Jesús in Panama City, Durán spoke to the Miami Herald about his toughest foe: “I would not like to step into the ring again with Esteban,” Durán said, “but if it comes to it, I will knock him out again.” According to promoter Don King, staging the rubber match was just short of hard labor. “It was a job just to get the two managers of the fighters to even think about a match,” King told Sports Illustrated. “They had fought twice and neither wanted to fight a third time. First I convinced de Jesús. But the hard part was convincing Eleta. Then, when we did agree, trying to find a site that pleased him was almost impossible. One place was too cold; the next too hot. A third place, somewhere in Africa, was OK, but then Eleta didn't think he could get Durán's money out. He finally said yes to Las Vegas.”
Except for a few heated insults exchanged before their previous fights, Durán and de Jesús were fierce but not enraged competitors. In the days before their unification match, however, Durán made his feelings about de Jesús clear. “I don't like him for a lot of reasons,” Durán said, “mostly because he is the only man ever to beat me. And he is the only man to ever knock me down. I don't like him for a lot of reasons, but I have to respect him for them.” Their rivalry reached critical mass at the weigh-in when both camps took part in a scuffle that made the usually unflappable Don King jittery about the possibility of having to postpone the fight.
On January 21, 1978, Durán and de Jesús met at Caesars Palace in a bout broadcast nationally by CBS. Already hollowed out by a drug habit that predated his championship reign, de Jesús looked slack during the prefight instructions. He entered the ring a 5-7 underdog that afternoon, but the truth was that de Jesús, at twenty-six, was only the latest nostalgia act to hit the Vegas strip.
To make matters worse for de Jesús, he was now facing a Durán at his absolute peak. Durán, a juggernaut when he flattened de Jesús two years earlier, answered the opening bell by jabbing and circling. By adding guile to his attack, Durán ensured that de Jesús never had a chance at victory. Although he boxed well in spots, de Jesús was forced into the uncomfortable role of aggressor for most of the fight. In the twelfth round, he closed in on Durán, who connected with a trip-wire right hand—half cross, half uppercut—that dropped de Jesús in a heap. Showing remarkable courage, de Jesús crawled across the ring and hauled himself upright with the aid of the ropes. When the action resumed, Durán battered his bruised adversary with both hands until the fight was finally halted.
A year after unifying the lightweight title, Durán would abandon his title to focus on the welterweight division, where in less than two years he would notch his greatest achievement: a stirring win over Sugar Ray Leonard in the first superfight of the 1980s.
For de Jesús, losing to Durán in their rubber match accelerated his downward spiral. Manny Siaca, who trained de Jesús in the last stages of his career, told the New York Times that de Jesús no longer believed his career could be salvaged. “He felt depressed, that it was the end for him, that he didn't have it anymore.”
In his last fight, de Jesús challenged Saoul Mamby for the WBC super-lightweight title in Bloomington, Minnesota, far away from the bright lights of Las Vegas and New York City, and as chief support to the main event featuring Larry Holmes–Scott LeDoux. On July 7, 1980, Mamby stopped de Jesús in the thirteenth round.
In retirement, de Jesús began making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Long considered a tropical Arcadia after years of travel brochures, celebrity cruises, and sun-washed tourism commercials, Puerto Rico has always had a dark heart at its center. As a hub between South America and the United States, Puerto Rico has been a drug-running stopover for trafficking, with the inevitable tragic consequences. Even now, on the verge of being a failed state, Puerto Rico is suffering from a heroin scourge that has left thousands of lives in tatters. Now adrift among the junkie subculture in Puerto Rico, de Jesús saw his drug habit grow worse. He was arrested during a raid in San Juan and charged with possession of heroin. Then, on November 27, 1980, fueled by a potent combination of