By Edward Chaykovsky
According to trainer Joel Diaz, he was "more surprised that anybody else" when two division world champion Timothy Bradley pulled the plug on their long relationship.
Diaz had trained Bradley since he turned professional in 2004. Along the way Bradley picked up five world titles in two divisions and had several high profile fights including wins over Devon Alexander, Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Diaz claims everything began to change when Bradley's wife, Monica, became the fighter's manager. Bradley had parted ways last year with veteran manager Cameron Dunkin.
Reflecting on what transpired, the veteran coach is still pretty shocked with the unexpected turn of events.
"After the last fight with Jessie Vargas, I thought everything was okay. Usually when a fighter and a coach separate, it’s due to something going wrong, but I didn’t see anything go wrong. The only thing that goes wrong in our relationship is when other people start coming in," Diaz told On The Ropes Boxing Radio .
"When you start bringing other people that were not there from the beginning with you, they start thinking more about them and not about the work that has been done for years. It’s hard for me to settle in and figure it out, but since he left Cameron Dunkin as a manager and he got a new manager, which is his wife, things started changing. Things were changing at home, things were changing at the gym and all the changes were made because the manager had other plans.
Diaz says situation got so bad that he was no longer able to contact Bradley directly. He was forced to call others in order to get information on his fighter.
Eventually Bradley did reach him and gave him his walking papers. Not long after, Bradley named Teddy Atlas as the new head trainer. Their pairing will be tested when Bradley faces Brandon Rios on November 7th in Las Vegas.
"We’ll see, to me it came as a surprise because after a while I couldn’t get through to Bradley directly, everything had to be around somebody else. But now it’s another chapter that I closed in my career and my life and my job. I got other champions I got to make, I can’t look back and focus on that because that’s already done," Diaz said.
"Bradley won five world championships under my guidance, under my supervision. What’s done is done, I just hope that he moves on and captures another five world titles, if that’s the case. I don’t think there’s anybody out there that can do better for Bradley than what I did."
