By Elisinio Castillo
Olympic gold medal winner Felix Diaz feels "ready" for what he defined as a "war of fists" for this coming Saturday night against unbeaten Terence Crawford, the current world champion at super lightweight.
Diaz, a gold medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, will have the opportunity, for the first time in his professional career, to become a world champion in the paid ranks.
The 33-year-old Dominican boxer is confident he can beat Crawford to capture the World Boxing Organization (WBO) and World Boxing Council (WBC) world titles.
Their fight will headline an HBO televised card from New York's Madison Square Garden.
"What is coming is a war. As everyone knows, Crawford is one of the best fighters right now. I will go in there with my desire to win and I intend to win," Diaz said.
Díaz has 19 wins against a controversial decision loss and nine knockouts, while Crawford has a 30-0 record with 21 wins before the limit.
For the Dominican, this is the opportunity he was looking for throughout his career.
"The opportunity has come, it's time and I have to take advantage of it," Diaz said.
Crawford is coming off a great year, when he became one of the best pound for pound boxers in the world, and unified the WBC and WBO titles in the 140-pound division with a one-sided domination of unbeaten Viktor Postol.
Despite being one of the best out there, Diaz states that he doesn't view Crawford as being someone who is arrogant. He has a lot of respect for Crawford as a fighter and a person and found it refreshing that there was no trash talking in the lead-up to their fight.
"People saw it, everything was very quiet [at our press conference]. There was no pressure from him to me, or the other way around. Everything happened without incident," Diaz said.
