“There’s something genuinely tragic about a gifted, poverty-stricken kid who can make $50m, only to end up fighting as a sad, slow-moving grandfather because he can’t pay his tax bill.”
Those words appeared 26 years ago in Boxing News, and we revisit them this week for two reasons: First, because this Wednesday, August 28, marked the anniversary of the fight about which they were written; and second, because this unmerciful sport of ours is threatening to make those words echo in heartbreaking fashion again soon.
The subject of that sentence in Boxing News was Roberto Duran and his third-round TKO loss to William Joppy on August 28, 1998. And just as that anniversary rolled around, there was talk floating about this week that PBC is still considering putting on a fight in December between Manny Pacquiao and Mario Barrios.
The details of the quote about Duran don’t line up perfectly. Pacquiao made a lot more than $50 million in his boxing career, he is not a grandfather yet, and his long-rumored money problems don’t center around unpaid U.S. taxes.
But “gifted, poverty-stricken kid,” “sad, slow-moving,” and “genuinely tragic” all ring painfully true.
Under typical circumstances, Joppy vs. Duran would not be a fight worth revisiting on its anniversary, but this year it’s instructive.
Duran was 47 and had turned pro before the 27-year-old Joppy was born. Pacquiao is now 45 and, yes, he turned pro four months before Barrios, 29, was born.
The Joppy-Duran fight was originally supposed to take place on June 6, 1998, on the undercard of Evander Holyfield vs. Henry Akinwande at Madison Square Garden, but that event was canceled on about 24 hours’ notice when Akinwande tested positive for Hepatitis-B. So instead it happened on a rare Friday Showtime card in late-summer as part of a middleweight alphabet title doubleheader. While Joppy made the first defense of his second reign against a living legend, Bernard Hopkins made what turned out to be a bizarre eighth title defense against Robert Allen, falling out of the ring with a little inadvertent help from referee Mills Lane, injuring his ankle, and ending up with a no-contest.
Joppy, 25-1-1 (19 KOs) coming into the fight, was nobody’s idea of a world-beater, but he was a quality beltholder and probably deserves better than to be remembered a quarter-century later almost solely for his brutal fifth-round KO loss to Felix Trinidad. “Joppy, from Palmer Park, Maryland, is not a great fighter, but at 27 is younger, fresher and, unlike the Panamanian, has plenty of ambition left,” wrote Daniel Herbert in Boxing News’ preview.
Herbert went on to overestimate how much the 101-13 (70 KOs) Duran had left, as he picked Joppy to win on points. Showtime analyst Dr. Ferdie Pacheco was decidedly more pessimistic about “Hands of Stone” in his faded state. “About all that’s left of Duran is his colossal heart,” Pacheco said. Later he added, “I can’t tell you how sad I am that I’m here.”
Duran was trying to become the oldest fighter ever to win a world title — had he succeeded, the other champ on the same card, Hopkins, would have broken his record many years later — but he never had a prayer. You could see the stiffness in his movement from the opening bell. The difference in hand speed was instantly obvious. Duran wasn’t flabby, but he had that thick midriff bloat that almost invariably comes with middle age.
Covering the fight from ringside in Las Vegas for The Ring magazine, Jack Welsh used such terms as “dreadful mismatch” and “painful boxing nightmare.” The words on the cover of the September 4, 1998 Boxing News reflected the same sentiment. Headline: “End of the Stone Age.” Subhead: “Pitiful Duran crumbles in horror show.”
Still, the first two rounds weren’t that bad. They were one-sided, but Duran landed here and there and was never noticeably hurt. Still, his defensive reflexes were agonizingly absent. Joppy couldn’t miss with the right cross. He couldn’t miss with his little right uppercut inside. Duran looked tired and resigned after getting off his stool for round two. Joppy never used his stool. He stood between rounds, the effort to dominate Duran failing to tax him in any way.
Halfway through the third round, the story remained the same: Joppy in complete control and landing at will, but Duran in no obvious danger. Then, with 1:25 left on the clock, everything changed when Joppy landed a chopping right that staggered the future Hall of Famer, and nobody would have complained loudly if referee Joe Cortez had jumped right in and stopped the fight after seeing Duran’s legs stiffen the way they did.
Another couple of right hands landed, but Duran also flashed some decent defensive moves along the ropes, justifying the decision to let the fight continue even as Pacheco asked angrily, “What’s Cortez waiting for?” A snapping right hand with 20 seconds left backed Duran into the ropes again. He stumbled his way back to ring center, but when a combination landed and backed him up once more, Cortez stepped in at 2:54 of the round, with the Panamanian still on his feet.
“It was a minor miracle that the erstwhile ‘Hands of Stone’ finished erect considering the unanswered jabs, hooks, and uppercuts he absorbed from the unerring Joppy,” wrote Welsh. Boxing News called it “a disgraceful fight which never should have happened. It was worse than when former world heavyweight champion Joe Louis was obliterated by Rocky Marciano in 1951.”
Making it even sadder: “Duran collected only $25,000 of his reported $250,000 purse,” Welsh wrote in The Ring, “which was attached by the IRS to partially cover the $300,000 the ex-champion owes in delinquent taxes in the United States.”
Duran said afterward that he was retiring — by Showtime’s count, the seventh time in his long career he’d made that announcement. But he would need to retire another time or two. He fought four more times over the next three years, going 2-2, and finally said goodbye at age 50 after a decision loss to Hector Camacho.
Pacquiao, often compared to Duran for his fistic ferocity, his longevity, and his success across numerous weight classes, has been retired from the ring for three years, since Yordenis Ugas outpointed him on August 21, 2021. After 26 years as a pro, after compiling a record of 62-8-2 (39 KOs), after establishing himself, like Duran had, as one of the true greats of his era, Pacquiao had found the right time to leave the sport. He was fading, but not completely gone, able to step away from this punishing sport before he took a lopsided pounding and burdened his fans with that sad Duran-vs.-Joppy type of moment.
Then talk bubbled up a few months ago that the Filpino 45-year-old former senator, who’d engaged in a few harmless exhibition bouts but otherwise had stuck to his retirement, was in discussions to challenge Barrios for a belt at welterweight. It was not a fight anyone was clamoring for, but many perceived it as potentially competitive. If Pacquiao was the same guy we’d seen lose in respectable fashion to Ugas three years earlier, maybe he could hang with a middling titlist like Barrios.
Then “Pac-Man” fought a three-round exhibition on July 28 in Saitama, Japan, against mixed martial artist Rukiya Anpo, and the truth became obvious to anyone tuning in: Pacquiao is as hopelessly far gone as Duran was 26 years ago.
Not that a man’s physique tells the story, but it was ominous to see Manny’s midsection, with that same mid-40s-man thickness Duran had in ’98. Pacquiao lunged as he threw punches. He was frequently off-balance. He got wobbled several times in the third round — and this was against a non-boxer. Anpo is no Joppy or Barrios, but there he was slapping Pacquiao around.
The man in that ring in Saitama was not the Manny Pacquiao we spent some two decades marveling over. There was a boxer in there who vaguely resembled Manny Pacquiao, but it was a Silly Putty copy that had been ever so slightly horizontally stretched. And he possessed none of the moves, with his fists or his feet, that Pacquiao always had.
I assumed the Anpo-Pacquiao fight would kill all talk of Barrios-Pacquiao. But apparently not.
If the fight happens, it will be Joppy-Duran all over again. It will be “genuinely tragic,” and “pitiful,” and a “painful boxing nightmare,” and a “horror show,” because as we learned one month ago, Pacquiao is not merely in decline. He is a shot fighter. Nobody needs to see him playing the role of Mario Barrios’ punching bag.
Joppy-Duran is posted in full on YouTube, for all to see. Someone who knows Manny Pacquiao and cares about him would do well to send him the link.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].
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