By Matthew Hurley (Photo by Top Rank)
Three pounds. It sounds like nothing. But when you only weigh, or are supposed to weigh 135 pounds, three pounds can mean everything. Jose Luis Castillo weighed in 2 and ½ pounds over the limit for his rematch with Diego Corrales. After an allotted time to sweat off the excess baggage Castillo came in even heavier. Corrales, taller and of a more wiry frame than his opponent, strained his body to make the weight. Both men have struggled with this issue throughout their careers yet neither has ever tipped the scales like this.
When they weighed in six hours before the fight Corrales topped off at 149, two pounds heavier than Castillo. So that should be the equalizer, right? Wrong. It’s what you put your body through to get down to the mandated weight limit that counts. All the work, the sacrifice and the pain of the drain before the battle is paramount in regards to the end result. At the highest level a boxer should not cross that line. Castillo did and regardless of his emphatic knockout victory it will remain tainted because he didn’t abide by the rules.
Not only didn’t he abide by the rules, he thumbed his nose at them. Whatever his excuses may be, it seems more than apparent that Jose Luis Castillo and his camp had no intention of ever making the 135 pound limit. To make matters worse, a member of Castillo’s camp, reportedly his doctor, placed his foot beneath the scale on the initial weigh in which would make his subsequent weight gain in the two hour reprieve more understandable. Castillo ultimately sacrificed 10% of his 1.2 million dollar purse – half of which went to Corrales – and then placed a 100,000 dollar bet on himself with promoter Gary Shaw that he would stop Corrales. In the end, everything turned out just peachy for the Mexican star.
Or did it?
This writer picked Castillo to beat Corrales in both of their match ups. He’s simply the better fighter. He’s better because he has fewer flaws. Diego Corrales will always be his own worst enemy. His chin is soft and yet he loves to brawl. He bruises and swells if a punch even sails past his face. He’s too much of a fighter for his own good. His equalizer is the destructive power in his fists. But if those punches reach a chin he can’t dent he finds himself in a world of trouble. Just as Thomas Hearns found out when he detonated right hand bombs off of Marvin Hagler’s chin only to see his bald headed nemesis grimace and then shake off the pain, Corrales couldn’t dent Castillo.
In his entire career Jose has never been off his feet. Of course, Corrales stopped him in their first battle but many, this writer included, always felt that Diego got lucky. He caught lightning in a bottle when he couldn’t even see it strike and swung away like the true champion he is. Even Diego intimated that he was more than fortunate that Castillo let his guard down. But he won. He won that fight on heart and courage. Forget the mouthpiece incident. He did what he had to do and he got the job done.
Perhaps Castillo’s transgression should be forgotten as well. Maybe he just couldn’t make the weight anymore. Maybe the alleged injury to his rib in training did hamper him. Or maybe he just didn’t care about the title belts and knew that to kill himself to make 135 would jeopardize his chance for revenge. In the end he can always say that Corrales weighed more than him when the bell rang.
Does it really matter? Probably not. Corrales may have won the first fight because of an infraction and now Castillo may have turned the trick on him. Regardless, what boxing fans received were 14 rounds of fistic mayhem. These two wonderful prize fighters deserve each other and we as fans deserve them. They bring out the best in one another.
Should they meet again, and that seems inevitable, let’s hope that it is controversy free. So good are these two stars on the grand stage competing against each other that there is no need for side stories. When two great warriors collide in such grand fashion, it has a timeless, epic quality that overshadows any blemish. Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo were meant for each other, and they were meant for us.
