In any instance of bull versus matador, the expectation to produce skill and a bit of panache lies squarely at the feet of the matador. It is they, not the bull, who are expected to impress the audience with both the speed of their feet and their intelligence and it is they who will then receive the audience’s acclaim for killing the bull and staying alive.
The bull, by contrast, is simply acting out its nature. At best, it will be called stubborn and brave, yet even its bravery can be seen as a form of stupidity, or ignorance. Oblivious to their fate, they hurtle forward, they blindly attack the matadors, and the assumption, based on it being a rigged game, is that the matador in his suit of lights will evade the bull and prevail.
It is similar in boxing whenever two boxers find themselves compared to a bull and a matador, stylistically speaking. In that scenario, there is a greater chance that the bull will triumph, simply on account of it being a fairer match, but there remains a sense that the matador, or the technician, is the one with the upper hand. He, after all, is the one who carries the speed, and the skill, and the ability to move in ways the bull, or brawler, cannot. He also has that key ingredient: defence. With this key ingredient to call upon, the boxer is able to not only protect himself from whatever is coming at him, but he is able to set traps, not unlike how a matador entices the bull with their cape and sword.
For the most part it is true: pure boxers are more gifted and have more tools at their disposal. Yet never should it be presumed that brawlers, or pressure fighters, are somehow deficient or without talent or skill. On the contrary, to come forward and survive in the “pocket” is one of the hardest skills any boxer can master, if just because the margin for error is that much smaller. Watch someone like Roberto Duran, for example, and there is no end to the amount of skill on display. He may come forward, and he may try to initiate a “brawl”, but his feet and his head always move with the same intelligence of any great counterpuncher going in the opposite direction.
In Duran’s case, this was no better exemplified than on the night of June 20, 1980, when the Panamanian’s artful brawling was matched against the more explicitly artful style of Ray Leonard. That night, in Canada, many had expected Leonard, an Olympic gold medallist, to use his speed, reflexes and all-round intelligence to lead Duran, the bull, a merry dance. They expected Duran to find Leonard a target difficult to hit and believed that eventually Duran would tire of hitting thin air and either find that his recklessness led him on to a punch he didn’t see coming or that impotence caused him to give up.
As it happened, Duran was so good as a brawler, and so effective at close range, that none of that turned out to be true. Instead, in a true mark of his genius, Duran managed to unsettle Leonard enough to have Leonard fight his fight and abandon any plans to skirt around Duran and stay away. He got to his body to start and then he got in his head. Soon enough, Leonard couldn’t escape even if he wanted to. Now, for all his planning, “Sugar” Ray was stuck fighting not only Duran’s kind of fight, but in a way that was alien to him and likely to show that he lacked the requisite skills.
Duran, on the other hand, was already a master at close range, so was happy to invite Leonard in. He was as accommodating as Leonard was naïve and Leonard therefore entered his space; certain he could hang. Doing so cost Leonard his unbeaten record and his WBC title and the lesson, rather poetically, occurred in Montreal, the same city in which Leonard won his Olympic gold medal in 1976.
Which is to say, if Leonard needed a reminder of the difference between the two codes, amateur and pro, he got it that night, thanks to Duran. He learned that a pro of 72 fights, which Duran was at the time, boasts a wealth of experience no young boxer can fake, regardless of their talent, their smile, and their marketability. He also discovered that a boxer coming forward and trying to engage in a “fight” possesses just as much artistry and subtlety as a boxer aiming to avoid that kind of battle and obey the code of hit and not get hit.
In Duran, Leonard encountered a pressure fighter so effective he was able to stay true to that code all the while coming forward and engaging. He met someone with an ability to hit and not get hit in the tightest of spaces whose fluidity and composure allowed him to essentially hide in plain sight. Time and time again, in fact, Duran would duck down and roll his head in a manner so exaggerated the mere act of trying to hit him became exhausting. It was one thing to miss him and still feel his presence, but Duran, this apparition, made the experience all the scarier by repeatedly throwing back and punishing Leonard whenever he missed. This, for Leonard, usually so accurate, came as quite the shock. It showed him new ways to win and new ways to lose and only having spent 15 rounds sampling this twist on a supposedly basic style had Leonard accumulated the knowledge to then do something about it in their rematch later that year.
As for Duran, even now, some 45 years after beating Leonard, he is the standard by which all pressure fighters are judged. Some still try to emulate him, and ape his style, yet it is telling how very few fighters have ever been seriously compared to Duran or indeed hailed as “the new Duran”. Perhaps this is because his style, and the skill it took to fight that way, is something beyond the comprehension and capabilities of fighters who have come along in the years since he retired. Perhaps, as with horror films or heavy metal, the artistry required to fight like Duran is underestimated due to how simple it looks from the outside. Or perhaps boxers have started to realise that a pressure fighter – that is, a truly great one – is one of the hardest things to be in a sport which protects and glorifies matadors rather than bulls.
