Boxing: Duran finds new fight: Panama's idol eyes political career

(First Edition)

CONTRARY to all the available evidence, boxing is not the be-all and end-all for Roberto Duran. Indeed, before the start of his 100th fight in the early hours of this morning, the man with the hands of stone and the will of steel revealed that his horizons know few bounds.

'My mother asked me to run for the Senate,' announced Duran, who will run as a candidate for federal deputy in May's Panamanian elections, hoping to represent the neighbourhood where he was born. 'She asked me to run for the people of Panama. I know what it is to be poor. The people need me. They need somebody just like them.'

Duran insisted that he intends to box on regardless. A fifth world title, this time at super-middleweight - the bout against Tony Menefee in St Louis was at middleweight - is firmly in his sights. 'I'm not really surprised,' Sugar Ray Leonard, his erstwhile arch-rival, said. 'He's always searching for the rainbow, even though he found it.'