... just being ...

WEIGH-IN MONDAY …

… ugh. I just hope the damage isn’t too bad. This was a slacker week for me. I don’t know what was going on, especially since the first two days were good days … but I hit a physical wall. Couldn’t get into any road work, and only did two more days of exercises. I wished that I could have fought my way through it, but what ever that mid-week funk was, it kept me off my square.

I did manage a couple of big bike rides, but they weren’t to offset my laziness. They came from my meandering around town, with no particular place to go. Riding doesn’t burn as many calories as walking/running. A 3 - to - 1 ratio from riding to running/walking is what I figure is the calorie burn. Not only do you have to ride longer, but running/walking has that grit that is part of working out, the feeling of effort that you are doing something.

But I did have a nice long ride today …

ROBERTO DURAN …

Thinking about how I have slacked off this week as I rode my bike, made me wonder how I would have treated a week like this if I was getting ready for something, a fight somewhere. It happens from time to time, and as a boxer, you just work through that crap.

So I am going through my mind, trying to take the focus of the ride, and Roberto Duran came to mind. I can remember as a child watching his fights back when boxing was still relevant. In fact, I know there were a couple of his fights that came on in prime time!

He epitomized the Hispanic concept of ‘machismo’. Rough hewn, his dark eyes burned with the fury of the deprivation he knew growing up in Panama. In a boxing ring, that fury would serve to make him one of the best, if not the best, lightweight champions of all time.

It wouldn’t be until he would fight America’s Olympic darling, Ray Leonard, that he gained the mass appeal that eludes the lighter weight fighters.

I can remember the buildup to that fight. My newspaper station manager was a big fight fan, and he took me to see the closed circuit telecast. The atmosphere where we saw it was charged … so I can’t even begin to think what it was in Montreal, where the fight was held.

The weeks of buildup, Duran had created a very real animosity between himself and Ray Leonard. Duran’s WIFE even took some verbal shots at Ray and his wife and child. There was a lot of ugliness going on between the two camps. If it wasn’t personal when the made the fight, it would be personal when they got in the ring!

Ray was a smooth boxer, and Duran wanted to fight! By getting into Ray’s head during the press conferences, Ray wanted to prove in the fight that he was tough enough to beat Duran, standing toe-to-toe.

The first round, they felt each other out for the first 15 or 20 before they tore into each other! Ray held his own, and everybody at the arena knew that we were watching a special fight!

In the second round, Duran hit Leonard with a right hand shot that put him in a fog for the next five or six rounds of the fight. Duran would tear into Ray and just wore him down. In the last 5 rounds, Ray would manage to do better but Duran’s early lead was too much. Duran won, and I was elated.

Ray would get his revenge later that year; Ray was a great fighter. That is what seems to be missing in boxing today, big rivalries between super talented fighters. Who is going to be able to beat Floyd Jr.? Are there any compelling fighters to watch? Roy Jr. time has long came and gone. Fighting Trinidad to line his pockets and his ego.

I hate to say it, but they don’t make fighters like they did when I was coming up ..!