Champion Retains Title; Lacy TKOs Williams
By David P. Greisman
Julio Diaz desired to give anything he could in order to finally get in the ring against WBC lightweight titlist Jose Luis Castillo, some two years after they were initially destined to meet. After winning his first world championship with a majority decision victory over Javier Jauregui last May, Diaz would give the IBF belt away without a defense, opting for the higher paying and more prestigious showdown with Castillo over a mandatory bout against Levander Johnson.
Diaz wanted to give everything he had in the ring, too, but by the time referee Richard Steele waved off the bout at 2:23 of the tenth round, all he was able to leave with was a swollen left eye the size of the knot that Axel Schulz gave to George Foreman almost ten years back, cuts under each of his brows, a headache and the knowledge that this defeat had come from a bigger, wiser tactician and champion than he had ever faced before.
Jose Luis Castillo, 52-6-1 (46), controlled the younger challenger from the proverbial get-go, dictating the pace, bullying his opponent with borderline dirty tactics and setting up the golden opportunities for his vaunted left hook, a reported Diaz weakness, to land. Diaz, who moves to 30-3 with 22 kayoes, had been knocked down three times prior to tonight by left hooks, and although he was faster and more active than his rival, Castillo’s methods broke down the Coachella, California resident and created a gritty display of inside fighting.
“I knew he was fast, so I knew what I was waiting for then,” Castillo said of Diaz, “but I didn’t feel his punches, and I thought I could go in there, I could take his punch and go after him.”
Castillo used the first round to measure out the strength of Diaz’s arsenal, as both fighters used the initial three minutes as a feeling-out period. After the two exchanged jabs and a few power punches in the first minute and a half, Diaz switched to a southpaw stance, from which he was able to land a pair of left hands to Castillo’s chin, giving the Coachella Kidd the early lead.
Diaz would again switch to southpaw in the second round, this time just thirty seconds in, but would quickly revert to an orthodox setup. Castillo would respond by landing three left hooks at around the two minute mark, causing the man six years his junior to change his stance yet again. While Diaz was the more active fighter in this stanza, Castillo was more deliberate and accurate, earning his first round in the books and tying himself up on the cards.
In the third round, Castillo would come out aggressively, seeking to set the tone of the fight and succeeding, forcing Diaz into the role of counter-puncher, stalking him and creating clinches from which he could hold and hit until the referee called for them to break, and distracting Diaz from his game plan of boxing and using lateral movement.
Round four began with Castillo jogging into the center of the ring from his corner, leading with his head and working to get inside. With a minute gone, Steele called time and pulled both men aside to warn about hitting on breaks, but then noticed a cut over Diaz’s left eye caused by an accidental Castillo head-butt. Diaz threw a few leaping hooks that missed, and Castillo went to work on the bleeding abrasion, trying to take advantage of the situation and increase the damage.
Jose Luis Castillo continued to amplify the pressure in the fifth, walking Diaz down, hitting him with shots to the head, including a number of left hooks that stifled the Californian’s attack, which was deteriorating into arm punches that rarely landed. Still, Diaz was able to find his second wind and use movement to win the sixth round, with lateral shifting and head bobbing that made Castillo miss while he landed. At the halfway point of this twelve-rounder at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, Castillo had a four rounds to two lead, and would expand it as the night progressed.
More aggressive, stronger and effective, Castillo took a close seventh round and drew blood, legitimately this time around, with a left hand that opened a cut above Diaz’s right eye. As the frustrated former IBF champion went to his corner, his cutman faced the daunting task of healing the cut over the right eye while battling the swelling over the left.
Losing his vision in both eyes, Diaz struggled just to survive against the veteran, while Castillo targeted the injuries with accurate power shots, and also used his wisdom and experience to continue to hit during breaks, prompting Steele to issue a last warning to the man from Mexicali, Mexico.
The champion continued to dictate the pace and land his punches through the ninth round and into the tenth, pulling away from Diaz on the cards and sucking the collective energy from both Diaz and the contingent that came to support him. A minute and sixteen seconds into the tenth and final round, a big left hook from Castillo would drop Diaz, who would rise at the count of eight. Diaz tried to go to war to save his stake in the fight, but a right uppercut and left hook would put him down for the second time. Steele gave Diaz another count of eight before waving the fight off, thanks mostly to the accumulated punishment that had marked and deflated the disappointed challenger.
With his victory, Castillo may be looking forward to a proposed May seventh showdown with WBO champion Diego Corrales. Corrales, who earned his title with a tenth round TKO over Brazilian Acelino “Popo” Freitas last August, had been set to meet Castillo first this December, and then on this night in March. Instead, thanks to contractual and promotional disputes, those challenges went respectively to Corrales’s rival Joel Casamayor, and Diaz. It can be assumed that any obstacles have now been removed, as television network Showtime has begun to market the match, which will likely go on as planned unless the unexpected occurs (which, in boxing, is expected).
Going along with the theme of the unexpected occurring, the televised super middleweight undercard between Jeff “Left Hook” Lacy and Rubin “Mr. Hollywood” Williams went from being a “keeping busy” bout between Lacy, a 2000 U.S. Olympian, and the lightly regarded Williams, whose only claim to fame had been, well, his claim that he had defeated Lacy in the amateurs, to a seven round shootout that entertained.
Williams, 26-2 (15), had been elevated to #15 in the IBF rankings in order to justify his title shot at that sanctioning body’s champion, but he was game, sending out stiff jabs at Lacy, taking wicked power shots and responding with a few of his own. After four rounds, it could have been possible for scorecards to contain a 38-38 tie, but before long Lacy’s desire to throw a barrage of hooks to any open portion of Williams’s body meant that the twenty-seven year old from St. Petersburg would be getting closer to victory. That ending nearly came at the end of the sixth-round, but would instead come shortly thereafter just forty-seven seconds into the seventh stanza. Lacy, who moves to 19-0 with one no decision and fifteen knockout wins, came out charging and firing, forcing Williams to cover up in his own corner, in which he would throw out a brief but futile resistance until referee Tony Weeks caused the bombing to cease.
Afterwards, Lacy called out Welshman Joe Calzaghe, and expressed his desire to face the WBO 168-pound champion by year’s end. In a division devoid of big-name draws, Lacy’s best interests may lie in fighting Calzaghe and then either melting down to middleweight or stepping up one class to light heavyweight. With the only major names on his ledger being Syd Vanderpool and Omar Sheika, Lacy will need to stay active against tougher challengers before crossing the pond to meet the undefeated Calzaghe.