“My dad feels very good, in fact he already wants to return home,” said Robin Durán, son of the mythical Panamanian boxer. Roberto “Mano de Piedra” Durán, to a Panamanian television channel. “He has almost no symptoms and no fever.”
The Panamanian boxing legend, who turned 69 on June 16, was hospitalized this week with cold symptoms and subsequent examinations determined that he was infected with covid-19. The news immediately triggered messages of encouragement on social media from music, sports, international boxing organizations and supporters.
Its contagion impacted even more a Central American country that has been dealing with an increasing number of infections in recent weeks. The most recent report from health authorities indicated that the number of cases in the country reached 30,658, 15,370 recovered and 592 deaths.
Robin Durán said his father will have to stay a few days more hospitalized due to his age and the history of one of his lungs that was injured during a car accident in Argentina 19 years ago.
“The doctors told us that his evolution has been very good and that he has been attacking the disease before it reaches a case of complication,” he added to TVN Noticias.
The son of Roberto Durán He told sports portal JMDeportes that his father probably became infected on his birthday when he received “many” people who came to congratulate him at his home in the capital. He assured that his father had respected the quarantine.
“You know what my dad is like, it is very difficult for him to close the doors to someone and well, on that day, which was his birthday, they wanted to greet him, it was his mistake and he paid very dearly,” he said.
The accident in Argentina accelerated the withdrawal of “Stone hand” after a brilliant career in which he joined 103 victories, 70 of them by fast track, and 16 setbacks. Beyond adding four world crowns in different categories, he is remembered for his impressive victory against Sugar Ray Leonard, the undefeated and most dominant American boxer at the time.
That resounding victory that gave him the welterweight crown in 1980 was overshadowed months later when in the rematch against Leonard he withdrew from the fight in the eighth round with the infamous “No More.”
He is also considered among the five best exponents in the entire history of world boxing.
Durán He has received messages of encouragement from figures such as the renowned salsa player Rubén Blades, the former Panamanian scorer Julio Dely Valdés and the former coach of the Panama team, the Colombian Hernán Darío Gómez.
“We are as always in your corner and don’t worry that just like Durán he knocked out Kobayashi and Australian Thompson, so he will also knock out the virus, ”Blades wrote on Twitter. He referred to the withering victories of “Stone hand” about the Japanese Hiroshi Kobayashi, at the beginning of his career in 1971, and Héctor Thompson, before whom he defended his crown from the lightweight in 1973.
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