By The Associated Press - AP
The great former Panamanian boxer Roberto
Mano de Piedra
Durán received medical attention this Saturday due to a heart complication, his family reported.
Durán, 72 years old and former champion in four different categories, "suffered a health complication" as a result of "complete atrioventricular blockage," the family indicated on the boxer's account on the social network Instagram:
Boxer Roberto Durán at a press conference in New York on January 14, 2015. Seth Wenig / AP
"We are waiting for results to be able to share more information about his health later (...) "We thank our family, friends and all his followers for keeping him in their prayers."
Durán was being treated in a hospital in Panama, the president of the World Boxing Council (WBC), Mexican Mauricio Sulaimán, wrote on his Instagram account.
“He is a champion and he will win this fight.”
Juan Carlos Tapia, producer of a popular Panamanian television boxing program and friend of Durán's family, reported on his X account, formerly Twitter, that he spoke this morning with the retired boxer's wife, Felicidad Iglesias.
“She told me that Roberto is calm in a hospital and they will give him a pacemaker.
He is calm and stable.”
The boxer of an era
He added that Durán had to cancel commitments in Chicago and that doctors are recommending that he not travel for the moment.
Durán often makes trips to promote boxing activities and cards locally and abroad.
Mano de Piedra
became the most dominant lightweight boxer of his time.
He ended up winning four world belts in different categories in a three-decade career, in which most of all his heated rivalry with Sugar Ray Leonard, then the darling and phenomenon of American boxing, in the 1980s, will be remembered.
He defeated Leonard in a first fight in Montreal with the welterweight title at stake, but he gave up in the worst way in the rematch months later in New Orleans, when he quit in the eighth round with the famous phrase "No more."
Durán later added his other two world titles in the super welterweight and middleweight divisions.
The boxer is the greatest sporting pride and a national emblem of Panama.
The last time Durán was hospitalized was in mid-2020 when he tested positive for the coronavirus, from which he recovered and was discharged by doctors a week later.
A car accident in Argentina in 2001, in which he fractured several ribs, forced him to permanently retire from boxing a year later.
In 2007, he was appointed sports ambassador of Panama and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.