Trying to convince a crowd that the inept Cravan could last a few rounds against even an aging and flabby Johnson was no easy task, and the bout dragged on, marred by clinching and posing until Johnson mercifully put an end to the hoax with a single blow that legitimately dropped Cravan on his face in the sixth round. It was such a dreadful fight that Johnson was unable to profit from it as he had hoped. The film footage was useless, and word-of-mouth forced Johnson to enter the ring under similar but less remunerative circumstances across Spain. In an interview with El Nuevo Mundo dated March 15, 1918, Johnson was asked how much of his money he had saved during his storied career. He replied, with aplomb, “Not a cent. With the same ease that it came, it went, and the same hands that won it lost it.”
Once a clotheshorse who changed lavish outfits twice a day, Johnson was now night-crawling through the winding streets of Madrid looking especially threadbare for a dandy who had, years earlier, been compared to Beau Brummell. For Johnson, keeping solvent meant hustling from day to day. Because Spain had little interest in boxing—its national idols were superstar toreros Juan Belmonte and Joselito—Johnson saw his money-making prospects dwindle.
In March 1919, Johnson returned to Havana—site of his diminishment four years earlier—and upon disembarking, immediately announced that his loss to Willard in 1915 had been a fix. Unfortunately, this startling claim distressed the Cuban government, which promptly issued a warrant for his arrest. Again Johnson sailed on, this time to Mexico, where some brave entrepreneurs assured Johnson that there was a fortune waiting for him in setups. In keeping with his knack for chaos, Johnson arrived during turbulent times in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. There, he publicly called for black Americans to abandon the United States for the more racially tolerant Mexico, a move that verged on sedition.
At odds with the United States over oil rights, President Venustiano Carranza saw Johnson as a public-relations opportunity he could not pass up, and so he welcomed Johnson to Mexico City. Under the patronage of Carranza, Johnson waltzed through exhibitions, put on his strongman act, and eventually ran a bar in Tijuana. But Carranza would not live long enough for Johnson to truly prosper. Ousted by a coup after appointing a figurehead to the presidency, Carranza was assassinated before he could flee Mexico. With Carranza dead, Johnson found himself the enemy of yet another state. Ordered to pack his bags by the Mexican government, Johnson contacted the Bureau of Investigation and offered to negotiate terms of surrender. For seven years, Johnson had wandered across the world, often under duress, and now, with nowhere else to go, he was ready to trade one form of exile for another.
On July 20, 1920, Johnson met US agents at the Los Angeles border, where crowds had gathered on both sides to see the former heavyweight champion of the world relinquish the last thing he had of value: his freedom. Always ready for a publicity op, Johnson, in a ratty suit, paused dramatically before crossing so that photographers could capture the moment. And then, Jack Johnson, for years a Janus-like symbol of both hatred and pride, stepped over the border and, once again, into the unknown.
The Last Goodbye
THE RIVALRY BETWEEN ROBERTO DURÁN AND ESTEBAN DEJESÚS
He came a long way to see his nemesis, Esteban de Jesús, in his dying days, out to Río Piedras and to a converted milk factory where the malarial sunlight filtered in through grimy windows overlooking sickbed after sickbed. Now wraithlike, 90 pounds, and seeking solace from a future afterlife, de Jesús had been an addict, a killer, a convict, one of the top lightweights in the world, and, for a little while at least, a national hero, the first man ever to beat Roberto Durán.
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With José Torres retired and Carlos Ortiz, the gifted ex-champion whose prime began during the West Side Story–era, nearing the end of a creaky comeback, New York City was ready for another Puerto Rican star. In 1972, Esteban de Jesús, born in hardscrabble Carolina, Puerto Rico, debuted at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden, stopping George Foster in eight rounds. A stablemate of Wilfred Benitez and trained by Gregorio Benitez, de Jesús was a precise counterpuncher with a ruinous left hook and enough dark secrets to last a lifetime. After building a record of 33-1, de Jesús, already dabbling in the nightlife, set his sights on bigger targets—and the temptations that often accompany such ambition. In New York City he had impressed the afición with his sharpshooting skills, but not many believed he would be a threat to young Roberto Durán, the recently crowned lightweight champion stalking greatness.
If New York City was impressed by de Jesús, it was wonderstruck by Durán, who coldcocked Benny Huertas in his Madison Square Garden debut in September 1971 and less than a year later trampled stylish Ken Buchanan for the lightweight championship of the world. Even after building up an insurmountable lead on the scorecards, Durán could not resist his own malicious nature. A split-second after the bell ending the thirteenth round, “Hands of Stone” buried a shot below the belt that left Buchanan writhing on the canvas in agony. Poor Buchanan was ruled unable to continue, and Durán was declared the TKO winner, beginning a reign of terror that would last for the rest of the decade. Brash, bold, and brutish, Durán reveled in his reputation for savagery.
Durán, born in 1951, was too old to have benefited from the social programs of Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian strongman who seized power in 1968. As a child, he hustled around on the dusty streets of El Chorrillo, a Panama City slum that could have doubled as the setting for a Graham Greene novel. For the rest of his life, Durán would be hungry—for money, for women, for celebrity, for combat. In the years to come, he would kayo a woman who charged him after a fight, brawl with opposing trainers during gym sessions, turn press conferences into impromptu melees, and publicly greet Juanita Leonard—married to Sugar Ray, boxing royalty in his heyday—with a middle finger. Most infamously, perhaps, Durán chilled a national audience when he spoke disdainfully about Ray Lampkin, still in distress and soon to be carried out of the ring on a stretcher after Durán had nearly decapitated him with a wrecking ball hook. “I was not in my best condition,” he told a live television audience. “Today I sent him to the hospital. Next time I will send him to the morgue.” But winning the title had given Durán a chance to satiate some of his pangs, and his gluttony would cost him the next time he fought in Manhattan.
Because Durán and de Jesús both had reputations in New York City, where boxing-mad Latinos supported their countrymen as a matter of national pride, a matchup between them was inevitable. They met in a nontitle scrap on November 17, 1972, before a partisan crowd of 9,144. Less than three weeks earlier, de Jesús had scored a ten-round decision over journeyman Don McClendon in San Juan. Now, for $10,000, de Jesús was about to headline Madison Square Garden—still the fight capital of the world—against a rampaging lightweight with unlimited potential.
What was supposed to be a mere distraction from carousing turned into a nightmare for Durán within thirty seconds of the opening bell, when de Jesús landed a snapping right hand that stung him and followed up with a sweeping left hook that nailed Durán flush on the jaw. Stunned, Durán crashed to the mat for the first time in his career. When referee Arthur Mercante completed the mandatory eight-count, Durán dove into the fray again, but he could never claw his way back into the fight.
By feinting and making himself a moving target, de Jesús kept Durán off-balance from round to round, peppering the future legend with jabs, hooks, and the occasional cross. At the sound of the final bell, a disgusted Durán turned away from de Jesús with a defiant gesture of his glove. The unanimous decision went to Esteban de Jesús.
Over-the-weight fights against top contenders were holdovers from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and Durán manager Carlos Eleta continued the tradition by denying de Jesús an immediate rematch for the title. “After that fight, we went with [trainer] Ray Arcel to a restaurant and Durán was crying,”