Farewell to SA boxing legend

24 April 2017 - 09:28 By David Isaacson
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Trainer Nick Durandt has quit after 29 years in SA boxing. He produced 95 South African champions in all 17 weight divisions and 30 world champions
Trainer Nick Durandt has quit after 29 years in SA boxing. He produced 95 South African champions in all 17 weight divisions and 30 world champions
Image: LEFTY SHIVAMBU/GALLO IMAGES

Even with his mullet, bling and penchant for hanging out with gangsters, Nick Durandt was once mistaken for a cop in the US.

The former boxing trainer died after colliding with a vehicle while riding his motorbike in the rural Free State on Friday.

Back in late 2003 he was preparing for what turned out to be his mission impossible - to take Phillip "The Time Bomb" Ndou into the ring against Floyd Mayweather, then still a lightweight and on his way to becoming the planet's top pound-for-pound fighter.

Ndou lost that fight in Mayweather's home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, getting stopped in the seventh round, and Durandt was widely criticised at home for his training methods and failure to improvise when his gameplan failed.

In late 1997 Durandt was sidelined when illegal tape recordings of conversations - in which he'd used the k-word and spoken about Jews and Indians - were made public. The recordings were so heavily edited it was hard to frame the context of his comments.

Without the original tape the national commission took no action against him. But promoter Rodney Berman and sponsors dumped him quickly.

Ndou was one of the few to stay loyal. The boxer once recalled: "When I called him 'coach', he said: 'I'm not your coach. My name is Nick. I'm your father, you're my son'."

Durandt lost almost everything then and even his character changed, but as Ndou climbed the world rankings he got back into Berman's business.

Durandt's boxing downfall followed fallouts with Berman in 2009 and Branco Milenkovic, then South Africa's second-biggest promoter. He went into other ventures, like boxercise gyms and a tattoo parlour.

Durandt dropped the tough guy veneer only once in the time I knew him. I was doing a feature-writing course and I wanted to do a profile on him. He agreed.

In the piece I quoted him profanity for profanity, and because it wasn't for publication, I gave him a printout of the story afterwards.

After reading it, Durandt said to me: "If you publish this, please take out my swearing. I wouldn't want my mom to know I talk like this."

Durandt is survived by his two sons, Damien and Storm.

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