Blues guitarist lucky he didn’t hurt hands on Duran’s head

As I listened to Paul Thorn play the blues and rock the house on Saturday night, it occurred to me that he and I might have been the only ones at the Hard Rock Cafe on the Strip that had seen the great Roberto Duran fight in front of a live audience.

The guy imitating a Chippendales dancer on the dance floor didn't impress me as being a fight fan.

And then it also occurred to me that Paul Thorn once lost to Roberto Duran by TKO on national TV, and that set him apart from me and everybody else in the house. Way apart. As far apart as Tupelo, Miss., where Thorn was raised by "Pimps and Preachers," as per the title of his 2010 studio release, and Panama City, where Duran, come to think of it, might have been raised exactly the same way.

Thorn is a better musician than he was a fighter, having recorded six albums/CDs since being discovered by the brother of The Police drummer Stewart Copeland. Thorn has opened for Huey Lewis and the News, Sting, John Prine, Mark Knopfler, Robert Cray, Bonnie Raitt, Toby Keith and Jeff Beck; his music is an amalgamation of many of those, save for Huey Lewis.

I did not hear one note on Saturday that smacked of "I Want a New Drug." This is not meant as a complaint.

An Internet critic says Thorn has taken "his rootsy style of gospel-infused rock to a new place." This might explain why I spent most of the evening vigorously tapping my right foot against the floor.

But because I was not raised by "Pimps and Preachers," and did not grow up in Tupelo or Pontotoc or Batesville or Clarksdale in Mississippi, where U.S. Route 278 connects with U.S. Route 61 - "The Blues Highway" - I was slightly more impressed that the guy sporting the scruffy stubble and the electric guitar once went six rounds with the great Roberto Duran. On national TV.

Simon and Garfunkel might have sung about "The Boxer," but the man standing in front of me carried reminders of gloves that had laid him down. Or cut him till he cried out. Lie-la-lie.

He is an artist, too, and, in keeping with an acute sense of humor, he has designed an old-school lunchbox with his name and the title of one of his albums on it. I wanted to ask him about fighting Duran, so after the show I got in line behind a friend who had purchased a Paul Thorn lunchbox.

(I might have bought one myself, but they were $25, and they didn't come with a Thermos. And the beers at the Hard Rock had been sort of expensive.)

"The lack of confidence is every fighter's biggest enemy," said the 48-year-old musician, former worker in a furniture factory and prizefighter who compiled a 14-4 record, or thereabouts, mostly as a super welterweight, mostly in places such as the Lee County Civic Center in Fort Myers, Fla., or the New Daisy Theater in Memphis, or the Gordo (Ala.) High School gym.

"When I went in there (against Duran), I wasn't as confident as I should have been. I was a little intimidated. He had a 12-gauge and I had a .22."

Duran was 36 when he fought Thorn in 1988, but he would take the WBC middleweight title from Iran "The Blade" Barkley less than 10 months later in The Ring magazine's fight of the year. So he still had Hands of Stone.

They sliced Thorn's face to ribbons - the bout in Atlantic City was halted after six rounds, but not before one of the Albert brothers had said that Paul Thorn, a virtual boxing unknown, still was throwing punches in the fifth round, still was holding his own against one of the legends.

And that Paul Thorn, the kid with the pasty complexion from Elvis' hometown, with a cornerman known only as "The Fat Man," had achieved a moment of notoriety that would forever be burnished into his memory.

It also would become a lyric in "I'd Rather Be a Hammer than a Nail," a cut off Thorn's first album.

"I climbed in the ring with Roberto Duran and the punches began to rain down. He hit me with a dozen hard uppercuts and my corner threw in the towel. I asked him why he had to knock me out, and he summed it up real well. He said, 'I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.' "

Thorn didn't sing that one at the Hard Rock. He said he didn't know anybody wanted to hear it. I told him that, no slight to the Gordo (Ala.) High School gym, he was in Las Vegas, "The Fight Capital of the World," and he smiled sheepishly and said, "Oh, yeah."

I wanted to ask why his two fights against Tyrone Muex, whoever Tyrone Muex might be, didn't become a trilogy. But the guy behind me wanted to buy a Paul Thorn lunchbox and said I was holding up the line.        

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.