The Legendary Cutman: Stitch
Coming later this week in part 2 of our Kosport Magazine interview with Jacob Duran, “Stitch” talks about the tricks and challenges of being a cutman, and of trying to educate fighters to look out for their own health and safety.
About 20 years ago, a small promotional outfit called Guilty Boxing staged a monthly club show at the Orleans Hotel and Casino west of the Las Vegas Strip. It was a proving ground for Vegas-based boxing talent: the likes of future featherweight contender Augie Sanchez and future junior middleweight world titlist Ishe Smith made their bones in the ring, while the cards were put together by up-and-coming matchmaker Brad Goodman, who is a now a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. If a Vegas official wasn’t working any of the fights, the odds were pretty high that they would be sitting ringside. Not-yet-superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. and right-hand man Leonard Ellerbe were regular attendees.
For cornermen and cutmen, the shows were an opportunity to pick up work, sometimes at the last minute, as not every boxer necessarily had the budget to bring a full complement. One person who frequently found himself working several fights a night was a local cutman called Jacob Duran, who for understandable and professionally appropriate reasons went by “Stitch.”
“During those times, I was trying to get a little bit of credibility here, little credibility there and, you know, doing what I could and just kind of promote myself through performance,” he said recently. “And things worked out pretty good, man.”
They certainly did. Two decades on, he is one of the most recognizable faces in combat sports. (Google “cutman boxing,” and his is the name that pops up first and most often.) He has worked with champions including Wladimir Klitschko, who adores him still (as does Vitali, Wlad’s brother). For several years, he was one of the main cutmen for the UFC – and his forced departure from that organization only made him more popular. He even plays a version of himself in the movies, working with Mason “The Line” Dixon in “Rocky Balboa,” and Adonis Creed in the “Creed” films. (Michael B. Jordan, who portrays Creed, is yet another Stitch fan.)
In a sport and a business in which having snide or negative things to say about others is almost the price of entry, Stitch – he is always just “Stitch;” no other name needed – is the exceptionally rare example of whom very few, if any, have anything negative to say. Probably not entirely coincidentally, he isn’t one to play the game of sniping behind the backs of others, either.
“I grew up with that philosophy,” he explains. “My parents were always hard workers. They were farm workers and they were always helping people out. And they were always fighting for the rights of the people, alongside Cesar Chavez. There’s eight of us – five boys, three girls – and we all follow the same philosophy: be good people. Don’t be an asshole. Be fair. And, you know, it’s not that hard to do.”
That upbringing was unglamorous.
“I grew up in a migrant camp in California,” he says. “I picked tomatoes, peaches, cotton, apricots.”
In 1972, at age 21, Duran joined the Air Force. “And I had friends already stationed in Thailand, and they invited me to some fights. It was Muay Thai, and the guy threw a kick and knocked the guy out. And I said, ‘Man, I gotta do that.’”
He began studying Muay Thai, taekwondo and kickboxing. After leaving the military, he added boxing to the mix.
“Then I opened up my own school of kickboxing in Fairfield, up in the suburbs, with just a credit card,” he says. “So I was a trainer and I promoted fights, and I managed some guys. I did everything – but I had to learn to be a cutman.”
In February 1986, he was at the Auditorium in Richmond, California, to watch Marvis Frazier outpoint James “Bonecrusher” Smith over 10 rounds, “and I’ll never forget it. This guy did a good job on the cuts, and I said, ‘Hey, man, you did a good job. I’m trying to learn to be a cutman. Can you tell me what you did?’ He said, ‘F*** you. I’m taking this to my grave.’“
True to his nature, Duran has never revealed the man’s
