Stories from the Road: Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran

Everyone knows him, even though many may not know his name. Everyone has seen him, too, either in the corner at major boxing matches or administering to another seemingly impossible situation in the cage, looking down on a fighter busted up over his eyebrow with no hope of continuing. He is usually on the periphery, the bespectacled one with the thick head of black hair and white sidewalls, a Q-tip dangling behind an ear, wearing rubber gloves with a towel in one hand and a wad of sealant goop in the other, pressing it against a fighter’s face. Jacob “Stitch” Duran is the guru of mixed martial arts cutmen. Anyone who knows anything about boxing or MMA knows him as one of the best quick-fix guys in the world. During the recent tilt between Joe Smith Jr. and Bernard Hopkins at the Forum in Inglewood, California, there was Duran applying pressure to staunch a cut over Smith’s left eyebrow which was caused by a Hopkins’ head butt earlier in the fight. As is typical with “Stitch,” a cut that may have caused serious problems was not an issue at all after being treated by Duran’s magical touch.He has worked with many of the best in combat sports. On the boxing side, you have seen him in the corner of the Klitschko brothers, Andre Ward and most recently Smith, who closed the final chapter of Hopkins’ brilliant career by doing something no one else had done before: He stopped “The Executioner.” On the MMA side, you have seen him at events for virtually every reputable promotion in existence. He has worked with Chuck Liddell, Mirko Filipovic, Lyoto Machida, Forrest Griffin and Cain Velasquez. Duran has even worked fictional corners, as the cutman for character Mason “The Line” Dixon — he was played by former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver — in “Rocky Balboa” and as Adonis Creed’s cutman in the climatic fight scene at the end of “Creed.” So it seems fair to say Duran has been everywhere, seen everything and worked on everyone this side of Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee. His roots emanate from Planada, California, where he was born and raised in a migrant camp. His birth certificate reads CPC Camp No. 12. As a kid, he picked everything from cotton to peaches out in the fields. As soon as he was able to walk, he was doing it. Sun up was his alarm clock and sun down ended days when he was paid three cents a pound. He occupied his mind daydreaming of being a professional baseball player. He still drives by those same fields; they give him energy. Being a distinguished cutman is light years from where Duran projected himself. He walked on to the baseball team at Merced College, in Merced, California, but when financial resources ran dry, he joined the United States Air Force. In 1974, he was stationed in Thailand, where he was introduced to martial arts. He immediately fell in love with the fighting disciplines, absorbing everything about them. Upon returning to the United States, he opened a local gym using a credit card and also wanted to sharpen his boxing skills. He trained and promoted fights and even managed a few fighters. He then went to Las Vegas to learn how to become a cutman. How does one know if he has the skills to become a cutman? “I was a trainer and a cutman, but when I moved to Las Vegas, I saw all of these boxing trainers, and being a cutman, I had that extra drive because I felt I was very good at wrapping hands and very good at stopping cuts,” Duran said. “In time, I just floated to the top. I wasn’t a medic in the army. I have a high school diploma; that’s it. My cutman skills came from practice and practice and practice. I would hit the heavy bag to experiment on different ways in taping hands, and finally, I found the formula that I liked. I used that formula for boxing and kickboxing. I got a good reputation, and that evolved into treating cuts. “I would look at what other cutmen did,” he added. “It’s really on-the-job training. There is no exact training method on how to become a quality cutman. It’s one of those things you have to just keep doing. I would see how some cutmen worked and liked what I saw, and I would see how others worked and learned from them how I would do things differently. I was really blessed with the people that I’ve come across and how I got the reputation. The only way you become good at anything is through repetition, and luckily, I was able to work enough fights and with enough fighters to see just about every cut.” You close your eyes and listen to him. He says all he has is a high school diploma, yet his wisdom is that of a Ph.D. He has written one book and is in the process of writing another. A documentary is being filmed on him — probably because they know his face, even though many, except for the fighters, do not know his name. They all do. That is important to “Stitch” Duran.The Train to Hell Boxer Beibut Shumenov is a major star in Kazakhstan. He has held multiple titles and was about to fight faded titleholder William Joppy in January 2011. Of course, Shumenov has the utmost respect for Duran, so he was handpicked to be part of his corner. There was just one problem: Where the fight was taking place was enveloped by an overflow fog that blanketed the area. Instead of flying into Shymkent, Kazakhstan, Shumenov’s hometown, “Stitch” and the team were told they had to take a train — an old, leftover Soviet train from the 1950s, with the hammer and sickle on the front. “We were 14 hours on the train, and you couldn’t see anything,” Duran said. “We were out in the middle of nowhere. The whole thing made you scratch your head and wonder where anything was going. Every day was below zero, and the restrooms didn’t work, so I took a bottle with me, and that’s where I went to the bathroom. That was actually OK. We used the little areas that they set up for us to sleep. No one spoke English, but there were students there that were learning English, so they practiced on us. There was one time when I was awoken by sparks coming from the train. I thought, ‘This is …

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