Corrales Snatches Victory, WBC Belt in Fight-of-the-Year Candidate

By David P. Greisman

Diego “Chico” Corrales surged back from the brink of defeat, overcoming two knockdowns in the first minute of the tenth round to beat Jose Luis Castillo via TKO, adding Castillo’s WBC championship as a hard-earned accessory to his own WBO title.

With a large mouse swelling rapidly and closing his left eye, Corrales, who entering the tenth round was ahead on two of the three judges’ scorecards, fell prey to Castillo’s left hooks.  Having been dropped twice, and with two minutes remaining in the tenth stanza, it seemed that Corrales would not make it out of the round or the ring at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas as the victor.

But with powerful hooks of his own, Corrales stormed back, a pair of rights sending Julio Cesar Chavez’s former sparring partner to the ropes, where a salvo of explosive rights and lefts sent Castillo’s head straight backwards, buckling his knees and prompting referee Tony Weeks to call a stoppage two minutes and six seconds into the round.

“On paper, this has the potential to be as exciting a fight as you will see,” said Corrales during an open media workout on May 4, three days before the match.  “I definitely feel that at some point, it will be bombs away.”

Chico prognosticated correctly, with boxing quickly going to the wayside in favor of plenty of brawling in the proverbial phone booth, each man jockeying for position with their heads on their opponents’ shoulders, Corrales throwing short hooks to the face of Castillo, who would then launch uppercuts and hooks in response.

Trading back and forth in the trenches would seem to favor the gritty Castillo, but Corrales stood firm from the opening bell, staying tight with his rival in both the squared circle and in points.  As the fight progressed, though, the same wear and tear that ground down Juan Lazcano, Joel Casamayor and Julio Diaz began to show on the face and pace of Diego Corrales.

In the first round, Corrales came out jabbing but ended up in multiple clinches with Castillo, where both pugilists would send shots to the body, with Castillo holding and hitting and attempting to establish himself as the boss.

Round two had Corrales unleashing a plethora of hooks, a majority of them landing while he and Castillo fought on the inside.  Towards the end of the three minutes, Castillo was wobbled slightly by a short left, acknowledging the effectiveness of Corrales’s punches.

Castillo proved that he too knew how to punctuate a round in the third heat, a combination of unanswered shots hitting their targets just before the bell.

Keeping to his game plan of situating himself on Castillo’s inside and using short hooks to the body and head, Corrales landed accurately in the fourth round, sending Castillo to the corner with blood coming from a cut on his left eyebrow.

Castillo slowed down the pace a bit in the fifth round, using similar offensive tactics as Chico, but adding jarring uppercuts for extra emphasis.

The sixth round saw Castillo’s uppercuts and hooks stymie the amount of punches that Corrales had previously attempted, the bodywork paying dividends, and a right-left combination shook Corrales in the final seconds.

As the mouse under Corrales’s left eye becoming more apparent as round seven began, Chico came out of his corner seeking to box at a distance, hoping to counter Castillo.  Yet as Castillo continued to land, Corrales went back in close, where the punishing uppercuts and hooks continued.

Entering the eighth round of a scheduled twelve, Corrales’s left eye was closing to the point where it was doubtful that he could see some of Castillo’s punches.  Bravely, Corrales decided to rely on his power, trading leather but receiving in kind.  Castillo implemented more right hands, taking advantage of Corrales’s diminishing sight, knocking out Chico’s mouthpiece in the process.

Working to the body to set up the head and perhaps the end, Castillo’s blows went low, earning him two warnings from Weeks in the ninth.  Corrales’s hooks became his only weapon, but his resilience reaped rewards in the form of his best round since the first half of the fight.

The downside to Corrales going deeper into the fight was that his eye still worsened, a situation not assisted by Castillo’s additional punches upstairs.  Thirty seconds into the tenth round, with Corrales needing to act the aggressor to survive, Castillo used a counter left hook to the chin, sending Chico to the mat, from which he would rise at the count of seven. Corrales spit out his mouthpiece, forcing the referee to call time and giving Chico a reprieve.  A bit later, another left would stagger Corrales, followed by a shorter left that put him down once more, earning a nine count from Weeks.  Again, Corrales let his mouthpiece out, causing the third man in the ring to dock him a point (making it into what would have been a 10-6 round), but giving him some extra rest.

The tactic worked well, as Corrales caught Castillo possibly trying to close the show, hurting him badly enough that Chico successfully rallied back with a thrilling victory.

With the win Corrales’s record improves to 40-2 with 33 knockouts, securing him the envious ability to choose for himself what comes next, all the while holding two of the lightweight division’s four belts.

Corrales could attempt to become the undisputed champion, as the other opposition is not nearly as experienced or skilled.  There is also the potential for megafights with Mexican warriors Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales, should they choose to add the extra five pounds, or with junior welterweights Kostya Tszyu and Floyd Mayweather Jr.  Each could earn Corrales millions in pay-per-view revenue, and his formidable height and power should keep Chico from being a total underdog to the likes of Tzsyu.

As for that potential fight with Mayweather, should Floyd get past Arturo Gatti on June 25, history would generate an interesting set-up.  Corrales lost by a tenth-round TKO to “Pretty Boy” Floyd back in 2001, a night that saw Chico hit the canvass five times before his corner threw in the towel.  That fight was at super featherweight, and Corrales was facing difficulties making weight, and was distracted by domestic abuse charges hanging over his head that eventually sent him to prison.

Castillo, now 52-7-1 (46) has come back from devastating losses before, ending up on the short end of decisions twice against Mayweather in 2002 but regaining posterity and the WBC belt when he outpointed Lazcano last June.  By remaining active with four fights in eleven months, Castillo, notorious for the weight he gains between bouts, has had an easier time staying in shape.  Having fought at or around 135 pounds for six years, he too may desire a move to junior welterweight, which has rapidly become one of the sweet science’s money divisions.

David P. Greisman can be reached at dgreisman@aol.com