Mexican actor metformin weight loss children Gael Garcia Bernal is set to play Roberto “Manos de Piedra” Duran in a biopic about the Panamanian boxer’s legendary bouts with Sugar Ray Leonard, and while I am officially away from the take148.com’s offices and unable to work for another week, this story has made it impossible for me to stay away.
Get ready for some analysis, bitches.
According to reports Al Pacino is in reports to play Duran’s famous trainer, Ray Arcel; one of the greatest corner men in boxing history, who trained the two greatest light weights of all time, with Duran and the legendary Benny Leonard 60 years previous. If you’re a boxing fan, or someone who demands authenticity in their biopics, then you should be worried already for two reasons. One, that Duran’s trainer Arcel, is a kindly, soft-spoken old man, which essentially fits Pacino’s style like a black ops assassin would fit Nathan Lane’s mom. I can absolutely see Pacino being cast due to his ability to yell inspirational lectures at his charge, but this is something that Arcel never did in real life. He himself admitted on numerous occasions that he could not control Duran. In fact Duran commented several times that it was a look in Arcel’s eye that told him it was time to work, and not what he said/how he said it. Unless Pacino is intending to put in one of the great transformation performances in Hollywood history, I don’t see this being true to fact, at all.
Second cause for concern? Duran had two trainers. And the second, and arguably more important one was a man named Freddie Brown. Brown was a gruff, old schooler who was not used to the mass-media that flooded Duran once he smashed Ken Buchanan and became an international celebrity. As such when the press people came looking for quotes, Brown was reticent and unsociable and was not publicized at all. Hence it was seen that Duran and Arcel were the team. Much like the press reports on the casting for this film seem to indicate. Fun fact! Stallone actually based his character of Mickey in Rocky, on Freddie Brown. I am slightly worried that whoever wrote (Venezuelan Jonathan Jakubowicz) this film has not done the adequate research into this topic.
I’m not sure how famous or well known Duran is nowadays, but to historians of the sport, he is often in the top 5 greatest boxers of all time, and comfortably within the top 10. His achievements are myriad and unprecedented, punctuated by his absolute demolition of a prime Sugar Ray Leonard, even though Duran had to move up in weight to face him. As is being reported the film won’t focus on his later achievements, which arguably were even more impressive. For example, his 15 round bout with Marvin Hagler, and even more spectacularly, his split-decision win over Iran Barkley when as a man ten years removed from his prime and a natural light-weight, he defeated the middle-weight champion of the world.
There’s plenty of drama in the build-up to the first Sugar Ray Leonard fight, which I won’t spoil, so I can assure you there is no need for long Rocky-esque montages in this film. There should be plenty of content. And I’m interested to see how they handle the second fight, which again, I won’t spoil if you’re unaware of what happened, but has never been properly explained. Perhaps this film will be the first time it is, as it seems Duran’s son is serving as an Associate Producer on the film.
What will be interesting also, is the revisionist history that plagues this subject. It has been claimed for the past decade that Leonard was forced, after having his manhood repeatedly questioned by Duran in the press and in person, to fight “toe-to-toe” with Duran, instead of boxing him and using his movement/slickness. But this is a myth that has been carefully cultivated in the media by Leonard’s trainer, the legendary Angelo Dundee, and indeed, Leonard himself. The truth is that Dundee analyzed Duran and found that you had to stop Duran from moving forward and getting the momentum, so Leonard standing in there with him in the middle of the ring would be the best way to fight him. It was also a fact that they were well aware of, that Leonard’s knockout record coming into the fight was considerably higher than Duran’s, and they believed that instead of the rugged (but smaller) Duran, it was Leonard who was the bigger puncher in the fight. Let’s see how they handle this.
I can’t buy Bernal as Duran, I don’t think that he can bring the intensity. But let’s hope…
Fun fact: Duran was in Rocky, as a quick sparring partner. Stallone thought since he was a big fight fan, and he had been training hard for the film, he might handle the significantly smaller Duran. He did not, as Duran hit him so hard and so often that he had to ask Duran to stop. Duran later complained that he hadn’t even been hitting him hard.
