A gutsy fighter from the 80s who had fought mostly at Bantamweight and went through quite a tumultuous life. Got mixed in with the wrong crowd in his early days and struggled with drug and alcohol abuse throughout his life. His boxing career would be further affected by his lack of commitment, discipline, and continuous drug and alcohol binges which held him back from fulfilling his potential. His life continued to spiral out of control which led to him being away from boxing for 2 years. It wasn't until 1984 that he decided to clean himself up and get everything back in order but no trainer were willing to give him a chance except for the Goossen brothers who took him in to train. His upset win over Jesus Salud helped him earn a title shot against Bernard Pinango. Despite losing a controversial decision that robbed him of a chance of a great comeback story of winning a world title he nevertheless earned the love and respect from the crowd for his very admirable effort. His next fight would end up being a brutal contest when he stopped a bloodied up Alberto Davila which resulted in Duarte successfully avenging his loss to Davila 10 years previously and was named "Comeback Fighter of the Year" by Ring Magazine. His last bout would be against Super Bantamweight champion Daniel Zaragoza where he lost by 10 round stoppage. A very inspiring story and a fighter with a lot of heart. This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected
I remember thinking upon watching the first fight with Davila that his was essentially a non-effort, as if a stiff breeze would have knocked him over. Made me wonder if he was under the influence that night. The second Davila fight showed a clearly changed man, he went through hell for that one. The Pinango fight was a disgusting robbery. Duarte clearly beat him and it would have closed the circle on a real feel-good story not only for Duarte but for all of boxing after his trials and tribulations. Oh well, at least the WBA got to protect their home-grown “champion.” That’s what’s important I guess.
From what I've read Duarte was clearly in no condition to fight and was most likely under the influence days prior. Not taking away from Davila's win because he looked fantastic when he easily beat him but Duarte really looked off. He would at least make up for it in the rematch 10 years later. Duarte should have been champion and most had him beating Pinango in a great fight, even knocking him down and staggering him a few times, but of course politics got in the way of making a comeback of a lifetime. Still he at least bounced back in life. His struggles was the biggest battle that he's had to deal with and he managed to overcome it, title or no title. Honestly surprised they haven't made a movie based on his life. Repetitive as most boxing movies are nowadays Duarte's story is compelling enough.
Compelling? Sure, but not in an unusual way — people coming back from drug addiction and overcoming their own bad choices type stories are kind of a dime a dozen. He also doesn’t have a big name and no happy Hollywood ending where he comes out on top. It’s more fitting for a YouTube documentary as it doesn’t have a built-in mainstream audience. More boxing heroes than not had something to overcome. I’m glad he got his life straightened out but I don’t see how you sell this to a Hollywood studio.
Stories of people overcoming addiction and bad choices are pretty common but what stories aren't common? Most boxing movies are always about the underdog facing challenges and adversity leading up to the big final fight. Duarte not coming out on top is also similar to Rocky where he didn't win against Apollo Creed the first time but still earned the love and respect from the crowd which that in of itself is already a cathartic moment. Micky Ward nor Dicky Ecklund were not that big of a name in boxing they still had a big Hollywood movie based on their lives. Last year we had a movie about Claressa Shields and now this year we're having a Christy Martin movie. And then there's also gonna be a movie based on the Olympic boxing team consisting of Pernell Whitaker, Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor. As long as a boxing movie has an interesting enough story about a character redeeming themselves in the end then I can't see why a movie on Frankie Duarte wouldn't work.
With Micky Ward, you had a unique set of factors: Someone with star power (Mark Wahlberg) attached to it (because he’s Mr Everything Boston and was a fan of Micky’s as a hometown sports hero — not the first time he’s played one of those), Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti trilogy had raised Ward’s profile enormously (more people knew who those guys were than way more than half the guys holding belts) and the whole Dickie had been on HBO and (claimed to have) knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and had been profiled as an addict on HBO … plus the family/brother dynamic. There’s a lot of story there. Hollywood (on a low budget) made the original Rocky movie … not The Chuck Wepner Story. It was the story of a nobody fighting for simple dignity — he can’t beat the champ and he knows it, he’d be thrilled to be his sparring partner, but if he could just go the distance it justified that he wasn’t a complete bum. It was poignant. But it only worked as fiction, so Frankie ‘hey he came back from addiction and lost a couple of title fights’ isn’t quite the same. Yeah, they’ve made odd boxing movies but they’re almost always is a twist — Christy Martin was damned near killed by her abusive husband/manager, which makes it a story that can touch a lot of people. Clarissa Shields had a movie, who knew? But there have been probably enough successful ‘female boxer’ movies (as in box office vs budget, not necessarily super hits besides Million Dollar Baby) to show there’s an audience for it. I just don’t think you could walk into a studio and pitch ‘hey this boxer who never won a title was a drug addict and then he got his act together, won a few fights, fought a couple times for the title and lost’ and get a yes. But hey, someone can work up a script and give it a try.
I grew up watching Frankie Duarte. I was happy when Davila beat him the first time because Albert had been from my gym when he was an amateur and he only lived a couple block away. I thought Albert was winning the second fight. Frankie himself said that he never claims that he won that fight; he says that for some reason God has always chosen Albert Davila to humble him. Just over a decade ago, a video was sent to me via email. It was of Frankie training a fighter; he was teaching him some basic stuff. There was a chain of people on this email bad mouthing Frankie. But in that video Frankie was giving great advice, he was telling him exactly how to perform the task at hand. When Frankie demonstrated, he moved his feet correctly but the fighter was not- his feet were getting too far apart and it was killing his left hook. That was my comment on the video, and I prefaced it by expressing my admiration for Frankie and his accomplishments. Shortly thereafter, we were asked to send 2 fighters to LA. There was to be an HBO series focused on Frankie and Rene Arredondo and their sobriety and journey in boxing; they were going to "train" the 2 fighters on camera- I was going to do the day to day gym work. Contracts were signed and everybody was ready to go when HBO got out of boxing.
