‘Quitter, coward’

Press, 28 November 1980, Page 26

‘Quitter, coward’

NZPA-Reuter New York Roberto Duran entered the ring a personification of the macho man and walked■ out labelled a quitter, a coward, and a disgrace to his profession. Never has an athlete’s public image undergone any quicker change. The New York newspaper headlines said it all in reporting the bizarre ending of Wednesday’s W.B.C. welterweight title fight in New Orleans, when Duran stopped fighting near the end of the eighth round and told the referee he was finished — though unscarred and apparently unhurt — as Sugar Ray: Leonard regained the championship. . I Trumpeted the tabloid; “New York Post” in a huge front-page headline: "What a Farce.” The newspaper’s back

page bore the headline: “A Black Eye for Boxing.” Inside the “Post” called it the “fight that shocked the world,” and the Executive Sports Editor, Jerry Lisker wrote that Duran, “the epitome of courage and grit, quit like a dog.” A sports columnist Mike Lupica, of the New York “Daily News,” under the : heading "Duran’s Gutless Retreat Smelled Foul” wrote: “Duran, who was supposed to be the greatest streetfighter of them all, with a fighting heart the size of Panama, turned one the most anticipated boxing rematches in years into something foul-smelling and dirty. “So Duran says he has re- | tired. So there will be no third fight. Good enough. Get him out of there—there hasn’t been a stinker like this in boxing in a long time,” Lupica wrote.