Roberto Durán Samaniego or widely recognized as Roberto Durán, is a Panamanian professional boxer. He was nicknamed as Manos de Piedra which means “Hands of Stone” and El Cholo. He was born in Panama on June 16th of 1961 with a Mexican father and a Panamanian mother.
Durán was regarded as one of the greatest boxers in the history of boxing for his top boxing technique and record.
He was The Ring’s ranked 5 greatest boxers for the last 80 years in boxing history. While rated as 8th of the best fighters by the boxing writer and sports historian Bet Sugar. He was also often considered by most boxing enthusiasts as the greatest lightweight boxer in the history.
He earned world titles in various weight divisions. These world titles are as follows: (1) World Lightweight Boxing Champion in 1972 to 1979, (2) World Welterweight Boxing Champion in 1980, (3) World Junior Middleweight Boxing Champion in 1983 to 1984, and (4) World Middleweight Boxing Champion in 1989. He was noted as the 2nd boxer in the history to have fought within 5 decades. He also was trained by the well-recognized legendary trainer in boxing – Ray Arcel.
After a serious life-threatening car accident in October of 2001, Durán finally announced his retirement from the boxing industry in 2002 being at the age of 50. By the time of his retirement, Durán had the astonishing record of 103 wins from 119 fights, 70 of which were knockouts, while having 16 losses and no draws.
One of the reasons why he was also well-recognized in the boxing industry is that, he was (up to now) the only man in the history of boxing to have won fights in five separate decades. His noted fights won were during the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and likewise the 2000s. He was thus associated with boxing legend Jack Johnson, who had a registered fighting wins during the 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, and 1930s.
Roberto Durán was said to have a belligerent fighting technique and had always never failed to bring action-packed excitement to audiences during his matches. One of his top records was having 31 fights won in a row without attaining any loss and having mostly knockouts.
He was included in the selected top boxers who had a record of 50 or more winning fights through knockouts having been able to take 70 wins through KO. The Ring ranked him 28th of the best punches in boxing history.
In 2006, Roberto Durán was included in the World Boxing Hall of Fame located in California, while having been able to be inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame located in Canastota New York in year 2007.
