Corrales is spelled W-A-R-R-I-O-R
Mark E. Ortega
Freelance
May 7, 2009
“Brutality is what brings fans to the game. Savagery is what has made boxing great. It has elegant moments and it has savage moments. But it's still a great game. One on one it can be beautiful.” - Diego Corrales, 1977-2007
Four years ago today, everything for me changed.
I was at the tail-end of my four years of high school, just finishing up my junior year. You know, the last year in school you really have to try hard at before applying to colleges to attend following your graduation.
Needless to say, I was pretty much finished caring about school at that point of the year. Summer was only about five weeks away, so I had already floated off into my own world and began my summer early.
At the time, Showtime was offering a replay of the WBO 135-pound title clash between the undefeated Acelino Freitas of Brazil, who was 35-0 with 31 knockouts at the time and Diego Corrales, 38-2 with 32 knockouts of Sacramento, California. Corrales was moving up in weight after earning a split-decision victory over Joel Casamayor to claim the vacant WBO 130-pound title in a rematch of a fight won by Casamayor on cuts.
Freitas came out quickly against Corrales, piling up an early lead on the scorecards. But Corrales would overcome the initial surge by Freitas and then overwhelm him with well-timed power shots that would force Freitas to the canvas multiple times before also forcing him to give up and Corrales had earned a title in his second weight class. It was one of the most see-saw battles I had ever witnessed, and it got me excited for Corrales’ next fight, which would be a unification bout with WBC 135-pound champion and recognized world lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo.
I had never seen Castillo fight before to my knowledge, but I had quickly read that he was a fighter who may be an equal to Corrales in terms of will and one who possessed an iron chin, as he had never been down before in fifty-nine professional fights. It was a fight that was promised to provide a ton of action, and that was what I was seeking that weekend that would occur on the eve of my 17th birthday.
I must say that to this day, that bout is easily the best early birthday present I have ever received. Watching live on Showtime, I eagerly awaited the main event as Juan Manuel Marquez pounded out a one-sided decision victory over Victor Polo to defend his 126-pound title. The main event was finally about to be underway, and I couldn’t help but feel that something incredible was going to take place.
“This is a war of attrition. This is the final battle. I am here and I will die in that ring before I give up what I have,” Corrales would say in the pre-fight hype. He would soon find out exactly how far he would be willing to go exactly to hold onto his title.
From the opening bell, I knew that my gut instinct was a good one. Corrales and Castillo went right at each other, toe-to-toe, in the center of the ring. They would take turns firing off four or five punch combinations on the inside, which was where the fight was exclusively fought, with Castillo having the early moments and the Showtime team of Al Bernstein and Steve Albert questioning Corrales’ decision to fight on the inside with Castillo. Bernstein would quickly rescind his comments after Corrales stopped Castillo in his tracks with his own in-fighting. Neither guy had an obvious edge but both men had each other’s respect.
To this day, I have seen this fight at least two dozen fights and have scored it every way possible. After four rounds, I’ve had both guys ahead before, and I have more than often had the fight even. I wasn’t sure whether I could not find one fighter better than the other or whether I just did not care enough to remember; as what I was seeing would grasp my full attention. At so many different points in the fight, I have gotten goosebumps, even at the replay capacity. Whether it’s when Albert comments that “you could fit a sheet of paper between the two of them, and that’s it” or when Bernstein remarks that he can’t recall a better fight in the history of Showtime Championship Boxing, the commentators did their part to add to the mystique of the battle without over-diluting it with useless banter.
The fight had everything. It was brutal, yet tactical. Both guys were landing at a high percentage but you couldn’t say these were two guys who thought “defense” was a four-letter word, either. There was a lot on the line and both men were doing everything in their power to emerge victorious. It was the type of war that I had never had the privilege of seeing before, and I knew it was a moment in my life that I would recall forever.
In the tenth round it finally seemed that one fighter was going to pull away, as Castillo landed a picture-perfect left hook on a lunging Corrales just seconds into the round, depositing Corrales on the seat of his pants and seemingly out of the fight.
Corrales would remove his mouthpiece and get up before the count of ten, buying himself some additional seconds of recovery before Castillo would continue his assault and put Corrales in the very same predicament he had found himself in not half a minute beforehand. Corrales would again remove his mouthpiece, return to his feet, and be allowed to continue, but not before referee Tony Weeks would correctly take a point away from Corrales.
Joe Goossen, Corrales’ esteemed trainer, would utter the famed words “You gotta fucking get inside on him now!” to Corrales, and that would prove to be all he needed to get his wits about and try and survive the round.
If Castillo had read "The Art of War", he would know to "never corner a desperate man". With an obvious 10-6 round in Castillo's favor in a very close fight, it was obvious what Corrales would need to do in order to win this fight. At that point in time, you can imagine that Corrales was just trying to survive. But a fighter like Corrales is most dangerous in survival mode.
Castillo thought it was just a matter of time before this fight would be officially over, but Corrales would change that thought with a series of powerful shots that began with a right hook and wouldn’t end until a left hand would send Castillo’s eyes reeling into the back of his head as his body would bounce of the ropes like a rag-doll. “Weeks steps in and the fight…is…over!” Albert would exclaim as the referee would stop the fight earning Corrales the most emphatic victory of his career. It was a round that sent me jumping into the air full of an excitement or an adrenaline that I had never experienced before, and from that moment onward I knew that boxing was the sport that had everything I was looking for.
From that day forward, I caught any and all boxing-related programming that I possibly could. That included ESPN all the way to Telefutura’s Solo Boxeo even though I spoke high school Spanish at best. Through the many wonderful possibilities on the internet, I was able to see fights from twenty years prior on ABC or from that weekend that had occurred somewhere internationally at just the click of a button. At first it was almost too much to handle but I quickly became a student of the game.
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Two years ago today, my life would change again. I woke up early in the morning headed to class my freshman year of college. I hadn’t completed all my work the night before and had planned on doing it early, but first I decided to check the headlines on ESPN to see if anything interesting had happened.
Unfortunately, something had happened as Diego Corrales was killed in a three-vehicle accident near his Las Vegas home as the boxing star was riding his motorcycle nearly three times the legal alcohol limit of .08. The headline would instantly take my mind off of my schoolwork and instead put my focus onto Corrales, who was hands-down my favorite fighter in the world.
Corrales died much the way he lived, recklessly. In the ring, that recklessness provided fans with unreachable levels of excitement and Corrales’ heart would constantly bail him out of those tough situations with Corrales coming out on top more often than not. That night, however, Corrales would meet his match and his recklessness had caught up to him.
It was as unbelievable of a day as I can recall. It had felt like a family member of mine had been lost. I skipped my initial class that morning and instead rewatched Corrales-Castillo and was given goosebumps. It was then that I would write about Corrales and what he had meant to me in somewhat of a personal ode to the fighter and his impact on me as a boxing fan.
It was the first thing I had written about sports since my senior year on the newspaper, but everything came naturally. I had written it in about twenty-five minutes, and, accompanied by a list of quotes of Diego’s I posted it on Facebook that morning.
Ironically, it would be off of the basis of that piece that I wrote that I would earn a job writing for Ultimate Boxing Results.
When Diego Corrales made me a boxing fan, that was one thing. But when his impact on me would give me one last push towards making this more than a hobby, it was entirely another. It would be an understatement to say that Diego Corrales had a tremendous effect on my life. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing this.
Every day since that first Corrales-Castillo fight, I have looked for someone to display that combination of heart, sheer guts and will, talent, and endurance that made him champion that night. I have yet to find it, but I will gladly continue looking.
