Verbal Jabs End Duran Bout (Published 1974)
- ️https://www.nytimes.com/by/gerald-eskenazi
- ️Thu Aug 15 1974
- Aug. 15, 1974
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
An error‐filled boxing comedy in which, no one got hurt but everyone was embarrassed ended yesterday when the State Athletic Commission formally called off next Monday's bout involving the world lightweight champion, Roberto Duran.
The Panamanian was to have faced Miguel Barreto of Puerto Rico in a nontitle fight at Madison Square Garden. The bout was sanctioned by the commission even though Duran has been under suspension here for more than a year because he refused to honor a two‐year‐old contract to face the former titleholder, Ken Buchanan of Scotland.
The commission gave Duran and his manager, Carlos Eletai until, noon yesterday: to agree to fight Buchanan within 90 days. If not, it threatened to call off the Barreto bout.
It did receive a telegram from Eleta, who is in Panama. But, according to a commission official, that telegram “recited” that Eleta had made a deal through Mike Burke to fight Barreto. Burke is the president of the Garden Center, the building complex known to most people simply as the Garden.
It was Burke's first outing as a Garden matchmaker. He handled the negotiations because the Garden's regular matchmaker, Teddy Brenner, doesn't get along with Duran's manager. In fact, said one boxing insider, “they can't stand each other.” As an official of the Garden's boxing department, Burke was permitted to act as matchmaker.
Brenner may have wound up as the only unscathed member of the fight that never took place. His job was placed in jeopardy recently when the new president of the Garden Corporation, Alan Cohen, indicated that he might phase out boxing within a year. Brenner, at least, can be satisfied that he wasn't involved in the fiasco that ended yesterday.
A commission official claimed that Eleta had broken two previous appointments with the commission. In addition, he said; “Last week Eleta came to Wall Street to talk to his stockbroker. If his intentions were honorable, if he really wanted his boxer to fight Buchanan, he could have called us.”
The spokesman also said that Eleta had insisted on two conditions for a Buchanan fight—the right to pick a referee and the right to select a Panamanian as one of the judges. Neither condition could be met.