Pro Cutman "Stitch" Duran Breaks Down Fight Movies

GQMagazine

Legendary cutman Jacob "Stitch" Duran breaks down the cuts, scapes and bruises seen in iconic fight movies, including 'Creed III,' 'Here Comes the Boom,' 'The Boxer,' 'Rocky IV,' 'Ali,' 'Warrior,' 'Million Dollar Baby,' 'Cinderella Man,' 'Raging Bull' and 'The Fighter.'  Director: Robby Miller; Jeremy Clowney Director of Photography: Sunny Bonner Editor: Paul Isakson Talent: Stitch Duran Producer: Kristen DeVore Coordinating Producer: Danielle Montoya Line Producer: Jen Santos Production Manager: James Pipitone Talent Booker: Paige Keffer Camera Operator: Michael Gloeckner Sound Mixer: Frank LaSpina Production Assistant: Grant Janz Post Production Supervisor: Rachael Knight Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Rob Lombardi Assistant Editor: Billy Ward

Transcript

00:00 I'm a critic when it comes to fights,

00:01 and when it comes to movies and Southpaw,

00:03 I'll let you know right off the bat.

00:05 I told Michael, "Well, he gets a cut right here,

00:07 but when you see the cut man working on the cut,

00:09 he puts a swab up there,

00:10 so he misses a cut about that much."

00:12 We in the boxing game, we notice things like that, right?

00:14 Didn't happen in Creed.

00:16 What's up, GQ?

00:17 I'm Stitch Duran, and this is "The Breakdown."

00:19 [upbeat music]

00:22 Creed III.

00:27 That was better.

00:28 Stay focused.

00:29 You take him where you want him.

00:31 Keep punching through.

00:32 You okay?

00:33 Yeah.

00:34 [indistinct]

00:35 You know, having done three with Michael B. Jordan

00:37 is priceless.

00:38 In the second one, I was telling him how proud I was of him

00:41 and Tessa and Ryan Coogler and Steve Caple

00:43 that was directing it, and I'm wrapping his hands,

00:45 just him and I.

00:46 And he looks at me and says, "Stitch,

00:48 we went from being actors to writers, producers, directors."

00:51 And he says, "I'm directing Creed III,

00:53 and you're with me as long as you want."

00:55 I gotta love Michael.

00:56 You know, he's such a good, good kid,

00:58 and he respects me enough to use me

01:00 as somebody with authenticity.

01:02 He'll come up to me and they'll ask me

01:03 for the proper things of doing things.

01:05 So how many guys can say they've done three movies

01:07 with Sylvester Stallone?

01:09 I have.

01:10 In the script, my name was Marcel.

01:13 Well, I don't know anybody named Marcel.

01:14 So I was trying to figure out a way how to do it.

01:16 But when it was time for Rocky to introduce us to Adonis,

01:19 he says, "Oh, this is Stitch,

01:21 the best cut man in Philadelphia."

01:22 - It's Stitch, best cut man in Philadelphia.

01:26 - What's going on?

01:27 - Hope I don't hit him.

01:27 - From there, I said, "God, thank you."

01:29 You know, the next day I said, "Look, I want to thank you."

01:31 He says, "No, it has to be authentic."

01:33 So Stitch came out.

01:35 Work in the corner that I was telling my wife last night,

01:37 during the fights, you know, I go through all that,

01:39 and then I'll pull the cup out so they could breathe.

01:42 Michael says, "I didn't know you guys did that."

01:44 You know, so he picked that up watching fights.

01:47 And I did that as the authenticity.

01:50 - Way to hang out there, wearing out.

01:51 Look, boy pump.

01:53 You see nice.

01:54 - Yeah, right there, I'm pulling down his cup.

01:55 That is the K-O-12.

01:57 My wife named it the K-O swell,

01:58 but you know, all the end swells

02:00 that they have before, they're all flat.

02:02 I was coming back from a UFC in London years ago,

02:05 and I had a water bottle, and I put it here,

02:07 and it's always contoured like that.

02:09 So I went home, and I got some clay,

02:11 and I made a prototype of that.

02:13 Then I had one made.

02:14 It's curved, because a majority of the swelling

02:17 happens here, or happens here.

02:19 So the theory of a flat iron on something that's curved

02:22 didn't make sense to me.

02:23 So one side is flat.

02:25 Let's say you got swelling here,

02:27 you can put the flat side here,

02:28 but if you swell here, then that one,

02:30 and that cold, cold direct pressure.

02:32 - Let go of whatever was, and walk into what is.

02:36 Go out there and be ferocious, you hear me?

02:39 Be ferocious.

02:40 Go out there, be a thousand streams.

02:42 [crowd cheering]

02:45 - Psychology is major.

02:47 I mean, it's major, major, major big.

02:49 Basically what he's doing,

02:51 what I did with Vladimir Klitschko

02:52 when he fought Anthony Joshua in his last fight,

02:54 when he lost his world title.

02:55 In the dressing room, I put my hand on him,

02:57 I said, "Look, don't worry about nothing tomorrow.

02:59 "I'm gonna take care of you like you're my son."

03:00 And I leave, 'cause I know the night before they can't sleep.

03:03 I'm putting the final Vaseline on him

03:04 before Michael Buffer does the announcements,

03:06 and we're this far apart.

03:08 He looks at me and says, "You can call me son."

03:10 Oh my God, that gave me chills,

03:12 but I knew I had gotten into his mind.

03:14 One of the best fights he ever had in his career.

03:15 The importance of this,

03:16 I had seen him like three months later in Germany.

03:19 And I said, "Vladimir, that moment, why?"

03:21 He says, "Stitch, there's very few people

03:23 "I trust in my life.

03:25 "You are one of them."

03:26 Those are the moments like that that make my whole job fun.

03:28 It's not even a job, it's an adventure.

03:30 Here comes the boom.

03:31 You might recognize this guy right here.

03:34 - Oh God, Stitch, I can't believe you're working on me, man.

03:37 That's so awesome.

03:38 - You know, I was doing a UFC, I think at the Manly Bay,

03:41 and this one guy says, "Hey man, I wanna take a picture."

03:44 That's not for, come on.

03:45 Then he says, "Kevin James wants you in the movie."

03:47 And of course, you know, I loved it.

03:48 As I get the script, I have no lines, right?

03:51 And you know, lines, I would bring residuals.

03:52 So I gotta think of something.

03:54 When it was time for me to do my scene with Kevin James,

03:57 he pulls me aside and says,

03:58 "Stitch, we gotta have you say something."

03:59 And I'm already, I thought about this two weeks before.

04:01 I said, "Well, you know, I always tell the guys,

04:03 "welcome to the UFC."

04:04 Ah, I love it, I love it.

04:05 As we go through the scene, I walk in and,

04:08 "Ah, Stitch, big fan of yours.

04:09 "Can't believe you're working on me."

04:11 I'm cleaning them up, I'm working them,

04:12 and at the end, I slap them.

04:14 - I'm having a crazy month of meeting people.

04:16 - Welcome to the UFC, huh?

04:17 - Thank you.

04:18 - I said, "Well, welcome to the UFC."

04:19 And then I walk away.

04:20 Well, nobody knows I was gonna slap them.

04:21 They loved it.

04:22 It was one take and it's in the movie.

04:25 Yeah, you know, the difference between a MMA fight

04:30 and a boxing fight is, MMA, their cuts are usually more,

04:34 multiple cuts, a little bit deeper, and different areas.

04:37 You know, top of the head, eyebrows and all that.

04:40 You know, the knees, the elbows.

04:42 Boxing, shoot, if I get one cut,

04:44 I could be eating popcorn at the same time

04:45 as I'm working on the cut.

04:47 If you're a veteran cut man in MMA, you could do boxing.

04:52 The boxer.

04:53 - You're not ready.

04:57 - Well, I noticed that the cut man's using

04:59 three little skinny swabs on a cut.

05:01 The cut's probably about this big,

05:02 and you know, you're trying to stop a dike with a finger.

05:05 It's gonna take a little bit more than that.

05:07 But the fight scenes were pretty good, man.

05:08 I kinda brought back the memories

05:10 of Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward.

05:12 Yeah, they did a good job.

05:13 Pause.

05:15 When you see this type of cut, number one,

05:17 my whole time that the fighter's fighting,

05:19 my whole focus is on his face.

05:20 And if there's any damage, if I could get up in the ring

05:23 and work on it within seven seconds, I've done a good job.

05:25 First thing you do is you wanna clean it up

05:27 with a wet towel, small towel.

05:29 Clean it out, put direct pressure on it,

05:31 and then put the swabs on there.

05:33 And the swabs that I use, I make 'em

05:35 to where the cotton swab is a lot bigger.

05:37 So I'll soak it into the adrenaline chloride 1-1000,

05:40 which is a vessel constrictor.

05:41 I'll put it on the cut.

05:42 The little vessels will absorb the adrenaline,

05:44 close up the vessels.

05:45 And then I would close it up with a mixture

05:48 of the adrenaline and Vaseline,

05:50 and have him go out there and go another round.

05:52 - I'll tell you when I've had enough.

05:54 Finish him!

05:55 - When is enough enough?

05:57 - That's a good question.

05:58 When is enough is enough?

06:00 And I had one fight that I stopped

06:01 because I saw that the fighter was taking

06:03 what I consider long-term damage.

06:05 He's getting it here and it's coming out here.

06:07 I'm working on the fighter and I asked him,

06:09 "Look, the doctors are thinking of stopping the fight.

06:11 "You wanna continue?"

06:12 And he gives me a real slight no and boop, stop the fight.

06:15 The two trainers, "No, no, no, he's okay.

06:16 "One more round."

06:18 But once he said no, I'm not gonna let him

06:20 go back out there.

06:21 The next day, eight o'clock in the morning,

06:22 him and his wife call me and they thank me.

06:25 And he says very simply, "I just didn't have nothing in me."

06:28 My job, the eyes and the body structure, tells me a lot.

06:32 Earl Spence, when he fought Crawford,

06:33 after he got dropped the first time,

06:35 his whole body language changed, completely were.

06:37 It was more on the negative side

06:39 than it was on the positive side.

06:40 And that's why it's so important

06:41 to have a good team with you.

06:43 Rocky IV.

06:44 [upbeat music]

06:47 [grunting]

06:48 Rocky was doing everything that you should be doing

06:51 for that type of fighter.

06:52 [dramatic music]

06:54 [grunting]

06:56 He's out there in the trenches.

06:58 He's running in the snow, which makes it difficult

07:01 for his legs and the thighs.

07:02 And believe it or not, the thighs of all the muscles

07:05 are probably your most important

07:06 because that's where you get your balance point.

07:08 [dramatic music]

07:10 Guys chop wood.

07:13 You know, the thing about it,

07:14 you're dealing with strength and acceleration

07:16 and then endurance.

07:17 You know, I interviewed Mike Tyson and I said,

07:19 "Mike, every fighter has that one little thing

07:21 "that nobody has.

07:22 "What's that one little thing?"

07:23 He says, "You gotta get your body

07:25 "in 100% physical condition

07:27 "because your body tells your mind what to do."

07:29 It's a good example right there.

07:31 But then he says, "You have to take the pain.

07:33 "You have to take the pain."

07:35 Mike is so right because you take a pain in training,

07:37 you take a pain in the fights,

07:39 you take pain with your family,

07:40 you take pain financially,

07:42 and then you take pain with long-term injuries.

07:44 This movie kind of said it right there.

07:46 [dramatic music]

07:49 I noticed that come in and putting swabs in their mouth.

07:58 I always tell these young fighters, I say,

07:59 "Look, if you're looking for a good cup man,

08:01 "if you put the swab in his mouth or in his ear,

08:03 "get another cup man, that's filthy."

08:05 That's the old school mentality, right?

08:07 Ask your cup man what the adrenaline chloride

08:09 1,100 does to medication.

08:11 It's a vessel constrictor.

08:12 If the guy says it's a coagulant,

08:14 get another cup man 'cause that's the wrong information.

08:16 And that was in the old school when boxing was boxing.

08:19 Everybody followed everybody's example

08:20 whether it was right or wrong.

08:21 Putting swabs, no gloves, in your mouth, in the ear,

08:24 those are things that I'm working on trying to get rid of.

08:27 Ali.

08:28 [dramatic music]

08:31 - I'm out of some of my, I can't see nothing.

08:33 - Oh, God.

08:33 - We're not programmed to handle those kind of injuries.

08:38 You know, the corner man did what he could

08:40 under those circumstances,

08:41 at least try to flush it out with water.

08:43 You know, I probably would have tried

08:44 to open it up a little bit more

08:46 and just kind of clean it and scrub it.

08:48 Those are situations that never happen.

08:50 And when they happen,

08:51 you have to make your split second decision.

08:53 And that's about as best as that guy could do.

08:55 [dramatic music]

08:58 - I can't see nothing.

09:00 - Get out, get out of your place.

09:02 Dance.

09:03 Dance.

09:06 - They were using, at that time,

09:07 Modset solution was a legal application,

09:10 but it's a sulfuric base.

09:12 I worked with Livingstone Bramble

09:13 when he fought this kid in Minnesota or something like that.

09:16 The kid ended up with a big old cut.

09:17 And I'm thinking, oh yeah, they're gonna stop the fight.

09:19 Next thing I know, it's not bleeding.

09:21 Couple years later,

09:22 I saw the kid came into Las Vegas to train,

09:25 and I asked him about that cut.

09:26 And he says, "I literally had to go to the hospital.

09:29 "They had to cut that dead tissue out 'cause it's burnt."

09:32 It's a sulfuric base, right?

09:34 And they burned the tissue to the point

09:35 where he had to cut it off and they had to re-sew it.

09:38 That's probably what happened to Muhammad Ali,

09:40 is he got that Modset solution in the eyes,

09:43 and that's what burned.

09:44 If Sonny Lee wasn't cut,

09:46 why would you use Modset solution?

09:47 I don't know if it was intended

09:49 or if they used it on the cut.

09:53 I don't know.

09:54 Warrior.

09:55 - Go in there, you kick him in the head,

09:56 take him down, and finish him.

09:58 - Wow, he missed everything.

10:02 The cut's up here, the one he put it down here.

10:05 But the enswale, the chaos swale as I call it,

10:07 is used for swelling.

10:09 And what happens when you get swelling

10:11 is you get all these little veins that pop,

10:13 and then they start accumulating

10:14 into a little bubble of blood.

10:16 How many times you get cut

10:17 and you put your finger on the cut,

10:18 you know, a minute later, it stops bleeding.

10:21 Well, blood coagulates itself.

10:22 But if you help it with a cold, cold compress,

10:25 you close those vessels that are underneath there.

10:27 A lot of guys will try to move that

10:29 into an area that's not damaged,

10:31 but then you move it into an area that's damaged,

10:33 and it comes right back, now it gets a little bit bigger.

10:35 So cold, cold, cold, direct pressure.

10:37 Yeah, this guy was a good attempt,

10:38 but you know, he was right below the cheekbone.

10:41 But now the fight scenes were real, real good.

10:43 The excitement of the corner and the audience,

10:47 been there and seen it many times.

10:49 - You heard his chest.

10:50 - Pop his shoulder?

10:50 - Yeah.

10:51 - Good, okay, I want you to pop his other shoulder.

10:52 The head coach was giving him water

10:54 and using the enswale, chaos swale at the same time.

10:57 If you're a coach, be a coach.

10:59 I always bring a cut man to come in

11:00 and do what he does because his whole focus,

11:04 my whole focus would be the face.

11:05 He's looking at everything,

11:06 angles and techniques and all that.

11:08 So don't distract from what you're doing.

11:10 Give that fighter 100% of your knowledge

11:12 and don't worry about the cut, let somebody else do it.

11:15 Million dollar baby.

11:16 - What was going on there?

11:25 - Major, major mistakes.

11:27 You don't use sponges, that blood gets inside the sponge.

11:31 And if you're going to use on somebody else,

11:32 that blood's still going to be there.

11:33 So it's filthy, throw the sponge away.

11:35 But even the application, the guy in the green

11:38 that's holding the bottle of adrenaline chloride 1-1000.

11:41 So the corner man is wasting seconds

11:44 by dipping it in there, getting it ready,

11:47 and then putting it on the cut.

11:48 And once again, he has two little swabs working on the cut.

11:52 It's not the way boxing should be done.

11:55 - You pull that crap one more time, you're disqualified.

11:58 - Ice on the back of the neck, I don't do that.

12:02 Some fighters want it just to cool them off.

12:04 I'll have the other guys do it, I'll have the team do it.

12:07 My whole focus is on the face.

12:08 Yeah, who wants cold stuff on you?

12:10 You know, you got blood around the nose,

12:12 you got blood still the side of the head here.

12:14 That should have been cleaned up

12:15 before you start working with the medications.

12:16 I did a interview with Marco Antonio Barrera.

12:20 We was talking about the cuts, and he said,

12:22 "What do you think about those guys that get the swabs

12:24 "and they rotate it in there?

12:26 "That's horrible."

12:27 You go home and get a Q-tip and rub it in your nose,

12:29 it's going to make you sneeze, number one.

12:30 They're creating damage more

12:32 than they're helping anything else.

12:34 Can I make comment on that sponge?

12:36 So when we're filming "Creed III," somebody had that idea.

12:39 The guy in our corner got the sponge and he did this,

12:43 not knowing, I didn't know that he was going to do that.

12:45 He gets water all over my glasses and everything,

12:48 and I'm going like this, and the camera guy's laughing.

12:51 So that was the only time they did it.

12:52 Don't do that, you know?

12:54 - Eyes are blurring, boss.

12:58 - Oh my gosh, you need to finish this fight.

13:00 - All right, you see how he's moving that inswell?

13:04 You see how the tissue's being moved and all that?

13:06 That's what I'm talking about,

13:07 going into tissue that's not damaged.

13:09 She looks worse than when she first sat down.

13:11 "Cinderella Man."

13:13 [crowd cheering]

13:16 - There's the bastard with a big weight!

13:24 - It's a little over-exaggerated, right?

13:32 And the guy is down, the guy comes and he punches him.

13:35 When he's down, you can't do that.

13:36 The referee should normally pick him up,

13:38 do the standing eight count, make sure that he's cleared,

13:40 and then let him go out.

13:41 But, you know, and I'm looking back at this,

13:43 I'm looking at the gloves and, okay,

13:44 well, those might be the type of gloves

13:46 from the '40s or '50s, wherever this was shot.

13:48 Maybe this is the way that they fought then,

13:50 when the only rules were, there really were no rules, right?

13:53 You know, now the standard thing is the eight-ounce gloves,

13:57 they go from the small weights up to,

13:59 I think, a maximum of 154 pounds.

14:01 Some states, I think, 147.

14:03 But then from there, it goes to 10-ounce gloves,

14:06 from, let's say, 154 to heavyweight.

14:08 You know, there's always been a lot of questions on that

14:10 because if you're a heavyweight,

14:12 why should you wear a glove designed for a 154-pounder?

14:16 Shouldn't you get a bigger glove?

14:18 Those are questions with never an answer.

14:20 So we'll see, you know.

14:21 Raging Bull.

14:23 - After 10 rounds, Judge Brossie, eight to two, La Mata.

14:30 Judge Brossie, seven to three, La Mata.

14:33 [crowd cheering]

14:36 - Raging Bull's classic movie, but the scoring system,

14:40 you know, eight rounds to two, seven rounds to three.

14:43 Here now, they use a 10-point must system, right?

14:46 So that was it.

14:48 - You ever just pour water on a guy before cleaning him up?

14:56 - No, I don't, no.

14:57 It's funny you say that because I was working on a cut

15:00 one time and this guy decides to get a towel full of water

15:03 and squeeze it all over the guy's head

15:05 and it dilutes my medication.

15:07 I jumped on it.

15:08 Don't you ever do that again.

15:10 They don't know, you know,

15:11 that's a good example right there.

15:13 The Fighter.

15:14 - You gotta win a title.

15:16 For you, for me, for all.

15:18 This is your time, all right?

15:20 You take it.

15:21 I had my point, I blew it.

15:22 You don't have to, all right?

15:23 - Yeah, I would've cleaned him up a little bit,

15:25 but I love the eye contact.

15:26 You know, eye contact is so important

15:27 when the coach is talking to the fighter, to be focused.

15:30 That I gotta give him credit for.

15:32 At the same token, as he's talking to him,

15:34 the cut man should be working on his face.

15:36 You take advantage of those seconds.

15:38 - Again, Ward against the rope,

15:39 says Neary is free to attack.

15:41 - What are you doing?

15:42 Come on, Nick.

15:43 - During the rounds, I'm as quiet as can be.

15:45 You know, we always have these discussions.

15:47 If I see something, I'll let you know.

15:49 'Cause they know my experience factor.

15:51 If I say something, it's the truth, right?

15:53 But if a fighter gets cut,

15:55 then I coordinate, I already talked to the corner.

15:57 I say, "Look, let's trade places.

15:59 "I'm going inside, you stay on the outside."

16:02 So we already coordinate that in the dressing room,

16:05 but you also talk during the fight.

16:07 Basically, we have 50 seconds to work with.

16:09 10 seconds before the bell rings,

16:10 you get the timekeeper,

16:11 they'll give you the warning to get out,

16:13 and they try to rush you out.

16:14 So if you can get up there,

16:16 start working on him within seven seconds,

16:18 you know, you're maximizing your time.

16:20 I told Sylvester Stallone, I said,

16:21 "Look, I'm typecast as a cut man."

16:23 Which there's nothing wrong with that.

16:24 But look, I'd love to do one of your movies,

16:26 "The Expendables," or I could be a cop,

16:29 I could be a preacher, I could be a teacher,

16:31 I could be something outside of being a cut man.

16:33 Just give me one little shot, you know?

16:35 So we'll see what happens.

16:36 [MUSIC]

Transcript

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