By Patrick Kehoe (photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank)
The thing about all out boxing aggression is that it demands knowing the end result alone matters; it’s fighting with only the end game of submission, via attrition, in mind. WBC lightweight champion David Diaz, 34-1-1 (17), fights as if each round might well be his last as a title holder, such is the forthrightness of his surging, offense at all costs style. He doesn’t expect to obliterate an opponent in the first round; but, Chicago’s favorite fistic son of the moment does expect to endure to vanquish. Not blessed with the raw power hitting to settle a fight instantly, Diaz tries to embody the figure of the relentless man, the guy who will be there all night long. Erik Morales’ right hand sent that man to the canvas and yet nothing could save Morales. The hardcore Diaz has come to internalize the creed that the more one invests in the professionalism of training, the more one casts wide the net of championship glory. Punish and endure to punish, for Diaz there can be no other way.
Maturing late as an elite fighter, David Diaz knows that his life at the top of the lightweight boxing food chain must be characterized by moving forward, always putting out the effort to do what has to be done, no matter the price, no matter the labor needed. Some fighters utilize the gifts that nature and nurture seem to bring forth, as if wondrous expressions of adaptive talent bread to the bone. Some fighters have to keep to the simplicity of all out effort over time and the practiced routines of commitment and relentless purpose. The gifted adapt to obstacles and produce solutions, just as the industrious tend to carry out invasions, overwhelming the most intricate fortifications, marauding; their course of total destruction set on auto pilot.
For a David Diaz to hold up to and best a fighter and champion of the quality and pedigree of a Manny Pacquiao, Team Diaz understand that what appear as miracles are often just the trace residue of simple processes taken to the limits of extreme possibility. That’s how a Keith Mullings knocks into oblivion a Terry Norris. Our inexact analogy is a necessary digression. After all, David Diaz believes that he might as well be the biggest little man attraction in Bob Arum’s Top Rank stable and that the fate of Erik Morales can just as easily become the destiny of the Pac-Man. Even superstars have to fight it out when all out attacks come their way.
“I want this challenge,” Diaz tells us smiling, a smile barely suppressing laughter. “I just grind it out... that’s the way I know how to fight, the way I win... just out work him every minute of every round.”
Sure, prefight certitude is really pre-fight bravado based on hope as much as clairvoyance. And yes, we do understand that many have tried to beat back the fierce power hitting Pacquiao and that few have succeeded. And yet Diaz and trainer Jim Strickland believe that all out physicality will, in the end, determine the contest between the two men. They want to remind everyone that this is a lightweight fight and they will be in the corner of the established entity at 135; no idle speculation needed to know if Diaz has the goods at this particular weight classification.
Strickland – a combination Eddie Futch and Yoda – believes that his charge Diaz has become a master of physical boxing, the art of applied pressurizing physicality each and every round of a fight, until the contest ends or is ended. What Strickland loves about the bubbling Diaz is that he’s become the summation of good habits. There’s more than a note of satisfaction in Strickland’s characterization of Diaz as “self-motivated” and a guy truly driven. In Strickland’s words, Diaz has “The Holyfield Complex.” If ever a ring workaholic needed a fitting moniker for his obsession to train “The Holyfield Complex” would be as much verdict as illustration.
No wonder the talkative Diaz allows himself to believe in big dreams and doing amazing things as a title holder, a true stakeholder in the big time money enriched strata of elite boxing. We understand that as a title holder he wants to play the strong man and defend his turf from all invaders foreign and domestic and to do that he wants to play the bigger man, the true lightweight, to what he has to trust in to be over reaching ambition on the part of Manny Pacquiao. Diaz has to also laugh off the dangers of Pacquiao’s proven abilities. Followers of Erik Morales understandably remind us that “El Terrible” was at his career endpoint when Diaz emerged victorious; from the perspective of David Diaz, beating Morales was the validation of his entry into elite boxing circles.
Two vantage points necessarily translate into two realities. Stepping forward, annexing the critical space between two southpaw combatants, letting punches not movement to dictate tempo, Diaz intents to fly past underdog status. Hitting Manny Pacquiao, pounding away at his aura of pound for pound monarchical status will be the only way to drill holes in the cemented notion of Diaz as the long shot in this match up, the over achieving nice guy who’s come face to face with a legend.
No wonder Diaz is all about one big idea: applying his basics over and over ad infinitum. Diaz must be possessed by the notion that you thrive or fail based on the total expenditure of your physical and mental resources, as opposed to selective reaction or intuitive athleticism.
Speed as velocity and armed devising might surgically remove dangerous elements, but relentless bombardment tends to flatten targeted areas of resistence. Thus, Team Diaz insists that from the first day of training camp until now there has only been one overriding sense: inevitability. They really believe that they can and shall make Pacquiao’s introduction to the lightweight championship waters deep and dark and fraught with uncertainty. They believe that they have the advantage over the championship distance of twelve rounds of all out combat. Team Diaz will take the fight to the unofficial king of boxing and collapse the distance to ensure the fight is about heart and desire and will.
The mantra of David Diaz’s life is moving forward, establishing him by putting out the effort to do what has to be done.
“I am my own worst critic... I am just a work horse.” Diaz’s simplicity really does become him.
Team Diaz defines Manny Pacquiao – regardless of his late career boxing acumen – as essentially an attack specialist. Pacquiao enters the danger zone to launch what he considers his decisive left cross and sweeping hooks to the body. He may be picking his moments to charge and discharge more than he did two or three years ago, still, the basic predicate of Manny Pacquiao – typhoon class warrior – is blitzing attack forays meant to astound judges, punish the brave and break the unworthy. Of course, that was Pacquiao fighting smaller, confident to the point of disdain in smashing apart the defensive pretensions of Marco Antonio Barrera and smothering the stylized counter-measures of Juan Manuel Marquez. The names do spell out excellence, though an elapsed excellence of the generation just past.
Diaz stands ready, willing and enabled as today’s road block, not ready to be just another name in the next chapter of the Pacquiao legend. No kidding, it’s a dangerous place. Twelve years as a professional prize fighter can only get you ready; there are no guarantees. This guy Diaz, who suffered through post-Olympic boxing burnout, has renewed zeal, peaking so late, at what might be for others the final phase of an athletic career at age 32.
And it’s odd to think of Pacquiao as the young man in this battle of champions; at least in the simple terms of chronological ordering and being half an inch taller, with a longer reach. Comparing records doesn’t give those who would cheer Diaz on to victory all that much to brag about either. Thanks goodness for Team Diaz, the numbers does not tell us everything we need to know.
So, where does Diaz’s certitude come from? Or is David Diaz, WBC lightweight champion, merely following the accepted custom established by all victims of misplaced faith?
Then again, what is life and boxing without believing in that which has not yet come into fruition, even if the odds and precedent and Manny Pacquiao are arrayed you?
How else would miracles work?
Patrick M. Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net