by David P. Greisman
Photo © John Booz/Fightwireimages.com
Their nicknames belied the fact that they were grown men attempting to deprive each other of consciousness. Their surnames showed how much they had in common: Juan “The Baby Bull” Diaz and Julio “The Kidd” Diaz, two lightweight titlists who had turned professional in their teens, two aspiring champions who were willing to win by throwing 100 punches per round and taking more than a fraction in return.
“The Kidd” sat in the corner, never coming out for the ninth round. “The Baby Bull” had once again steered himself to victory.
Juan Diaz’s reign began in Arthurian fashion in July 2004 when he outpointed Lakva Sim to seize a 135-pound belt. Diaz was 20 years old, still essentially a prospect in a division ruled by the veteran trio of Joel Casamayor, Jose Luis Castillo and Diego Corrales. He had maturing to do before the kingdom could be his.
Each title defense added experience. Julien Lorcy, Billy Irwin, Jose Miguel Cotto, Randy Suico and Fernando Angulo. All went down over a two-year stretch. Diaz was confident. Diaz was capable. Diaz would need to be challenged. Acelino Freitas was a two-division titlist. He retired on his stool after round eight. Julio Diaz held a lightweight belt. He, too, lasted 24 minutes.
Castillo had since moved up to junior welterweight. Corrales had made the jump to welterweight before dying in a motorcycle accident. Two of the men whose 2005 wars had brought the spotlight to the lightweights were no longer around. Diaz would pick up the slack.
Saturday’s victory leaves him now with three servings of alphabet soup: the unified International Boxing Federation, World Boxing Association and World Boxing Organization belts. Diaz still has more to do before the kingdom can be his.
My colleague Cliff Rold outlined last week the path Diaz and the lightweight division would need to take before all four major sanctioning body belts could be unified with the last man standing being the lineal champion. There are mandatory bouts upon mandatory bouts upon mandatory bouts. Chances of everything coming to fruition, it seems, rest somewhere between a possibility and a pipe dream.
Boxing has never been about keeping things easy. Roy Jones was for a time seen by many as the top light heavyweight despite Dariusz Michalczewski’s holding the lineal title. Had they met, the 175-pound weight class today might not be the jumble consisting of “Ring Magazine” champ Bernard Hopkins and lineal champ Zsolt Erdei. The scenario thought out by my fellow scribe would simplify the lightweight division, but it’s sadly unlikely in a sport where the main obstacle is ego and the main ingredient in ego is money.
Sanctioning body politics tend be one of the main culprits, often preventing unified titlists from holding onto all of their belts. They make one’s head spin, too: Juan Diaz will soon have mandatory defenses due against Nate Campbell and Michael Katsidis, though Campbell could be derailed due to legal issues (more on that below) and Katsidis might face off with another foe. World Boxing Council beltholder David Diaz could soon be mandated to face the winner of November’s bout between Jose Armando Santa Cruz and “Ring Magazine” champion Joel Casamayor.
Why go through all the trouble? There are reasons.
Casamayor is the last vestige of those who used to control the 135-pound weight class. He beat the man in Diego Corrales who beat the man in Jose Luis Castillo (Castillo was overweight in his rematch with Corrales and thus didn’t change the lineage when he won). He is a wily veteran, the most accomplished fighter in the lightweight division and the current holder of the “Ring Magazine” belt. A win over Casamayor – or his conqueror – brings credibility and legitimacy.
David Diaz holds the fourth sanctioning body belt, albeit one that was unjustly taken away from the aforementioned Casamayor. David Diaz would come forward all night, virtually guaranteeing an action-packed bout with Juan Diaz. And his Chicago roots would surely lead more fans to purchase tickets than did the sparse crowd that attended this most recent Diaz-Diaz.
But if money is key – and if unification and lineal recognition can wait – then Manny Pacquiao is the preferred choice over Casamayor and David Diaz.
“All those fighters are great fighters,” Juan Diaz said to HBO’s Larry Merchant in a post-fight interview Saturday. “He (Pacquiao) just beat a legendary Mexican fighter. I think it’s time for him to step up with a young Mexican warrior.”
Diaz was referring, of course, to Pacquiao’s Oct. 6 decision over Marco Antonio Barrera, a fight that may have been the Filipino Firebomber’s last appearance at 130 pounds. Diaz-Casamayor is a fight for lineal recognition and further credibility. Diaz-Diaz is the final unification bout. But Diaz-Pacquiao is Juan for the ages.
Juan Diaz, as Merchant said Saturday, is as close to a perpetual motion machine as is possible. Manny Pacquiao is a whirling dervish who claps his gloves when he gets hit and then goes back for more. The fight sells itself, and both combatants would have plenty go gain.
A Pacquiao victory over Diaz would place him in position to add the lightweight lineal championship to his past featherweight and flyweight feats. Potential wars with other 135-pounders are abound, and many of the potential matches that could be left behind at 130 could still follow him north five pounds, be it a rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez or bouts with Joan Guzman, Humberto Soto, Edwin Valero. A Diaz win, meanwhile, would be the needed final step to true stardom. Popularity and the money it brings will, more times than not, draw in the opponents who would then beget legitimacy.
The kingdom can wait. One win for Diaz and he can have the world.
The 10 Count
1. Sultan Ibragimov retained his WBO heavyweight title in Moscow Saturday with a unanimous decision over Evander Holyfield, topping the scorecards with two tallies of 117-111 and one of 118-110.
Ibragimov, who was originally slated to face WBA beltholder Ruslan Chagaev in a unification bout before Chagaev withdrew due to health concerns, has now defeated Holyfield and Shannon Briggs in his last two appearances. His next foe might actually be someone who made his name in this millennium.
Ibragimov-Holyfield will be replayed 8 p.m. Eastern Time this Saturday on ESPN Classic.
2. Holyfield, meanwhile, said afterward that he would continue to box despite stumbling in his quest to become “the undisputed heavyweight champ of the world.”
Holyfield, who earned the lineal championship twice at heavyweight and once at cruiserweight, will turn 45 on Friday. He has gone 6-5-1 since August 2000, though he was on the shelf for 21 months in a boxing commission-imposed layoff. Four of his wins have come since then, victories over Jeremy Bates, Fres Oquendo, Vinny Maddalone and Lou Savarese.
“The fight went to a decision, and Ibragimov won the decision. I just have to get back in line, and it doesn’t mean that it’s over,” Holyfield said afterward. “Did I do so bad that it’s not worth it for me to try?”
3. Holyfield’s old nemesis John Ruiz made a brief appearance on the undercard to Diaz-Diaz, stopping heavyweight measuring stick Otis Tisdale less than one minute into the second round.
Ruiz’s victory is a mixed blessing for the Sweet Science: It was quick, good news since “The Quiet Man” is best experienced in small doses, but Ruiz won, which means he’ll ultimately be back for more.
Is David Tua available?
4. In other action from boxing’s marquee division, Joe Mesi continued his comeback with a first-round stoppage of lower-tier heavyweight Shannon Miller.
Mesi returned 18 months ago from a forced two-year layoff imposed after the undefeated Buffalo prospect suffered two subdural hematomas in a fight he won against Vassiliy Jirov. Since then he has shaken off the rust with seven straight victories over opponents with a combined record of 94-70-5. Mesi will need to continue ratcheting up his level of opposition before he can be regarded again as a contender.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly: As alluded to above, Nate Campbell is facing legal troubles relating to a Sept. 27 incident in which the lightweight contender allegedly forced his way inside a former girlfriend’s Florida home, where he assaulted her and prevented her from calling the police, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
Campbell has been charged with armed burglary of a dwelling with assault, false imprisonment and tampering with a witness, all felonies, as well as a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence battery. He was denied bail twice before being released Oct. 10 on his own recognizance, according to local reports.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly Update: Jeff Fenech, who captured titles in the bantamweight, junior featherweight and featherweight divisions, pleaded guilty last week to stealing from a store two designer watches worth a total of $221, according to the Australian Associated Press.
Fenech was fined $750. Francis Grech, an associate of Fenech’s, had previously pleaded guilty to the December 2005 incident and was also fined $750.
7. “Dancing with the Stars” update: Floyd Mayweather narrowly avoided being eliminated from the reality dancing competition after his jive failed to land the current welterweight champion and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, in the upper tier of contestant scores.
“Energy wise and the way you attack the performance is definitely a knockout,” said judge Carrie Ann Inaba. “It kind of wound us all up. The jive has more structure. You’ve got to work on the structure of the dances just a little bit more. Work on the detailing of your feet, the proper placement of your body.”
“You have so much potential, there’s so much you can do,” said judge Bruno Tonioli. “You can do anything you want, you really can. Just please do it.”
He’ll get the chance. Mayweather and Smirnoff earned a total of 21 points, placing the pair in eighth place out of 10 couples. They landed in the bottom two, though, when audience voting was combined, but in the end it was singer Wayne Newton who got the boot from last week’s show.
8. “The Contender” update: Episode six in this third season of Mark Burnett’s boxing reality series saw Paul Smith take a split decision over David Banks in the last preliminary-round fight.
Smith edged Banks 48-47 on two of the three scorecards, with Banks winning 49-46 in the dissenting vote. That left Smith with a negative-one point margin, the worst of the show’s five preliminary round winners. Smith wouldn’t have been able to continue anyway, though, having been deemed medically ineligible due to cuts he suffered in his victory.
The four semifinalists are Sakio Bika, Jaidon Codrington, Wayne Johnsen and Sam Soliman. Codrington will face Johnsen first, and then Bika and Soliman will meet in a rematch of a 2002 bout that Soliman won by majority decision. Both semifinal fights will be scheduled for eight rounds.
9. By the way, how disingenuous was Alfonso Gomez’s appearance on last week’s episode of “The Contender”?
Gomez appeared in a 40-second clip showing him training for his Oct. 16 bout with former junior welterweight contender Ben Tackie, but the phrase that made the segment stick out like a sore thumb was “next week.” Either the clip was filmed last week and then spliced into the show, or Gomez showed up for the cameras back when the reality series was being shot to cut a promo. The lack of a similar segment for fellow “Contender” first-season contestant Sergio Mora, a late addition to this Tuesday’s card, leads this scribe to believe it was the latter scenario.
10. This is the best season yet of “The Contender” by far, but it still pales in comparison to the personalities, drama and set-up of “The Ultimate Fighter.” When will the producers realize that boxing, like mixed martial arts, is a contact sport, one that doesn’t need pageantry, sound effects, or orchestral background music? There are too many of those trademark scenes in the same vein as the ones made famous on “Survivor,” be it the quiet meditation in the dressing room before the fighter’s family comes in or the hanging up of the gloves after a match is lost. The boxers are almost interchangeable; the show is formulaic.
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com