IMMORTAL
The BWAA had a tie-in with not only the Mandalay Bay but with Showtime Championship Boxing, whose then- executive vice president, Jay Larkin (now deceased), had promised to put another $500,000 into the purse pot for the main event fighters. It proved to be money well spent. Corrales, in keeping with his more recent reputation as a likable and articulate sort in his dealings with the press, had been trying to scrub clean the taint of being convicted of felony spousal abuse, for which he’d spent 14 months in prison. He spoke respectfully of Castillo in the lead-up to the opening bell, saying, “Everything about Castillo impresses me. He’s a consistent, true champion who always finds a way to
Weeks deducted a point from Corrales, which was the proper call, but again Corrales gained additional seconds to recover while Goossen rinsed off the mouthpiece and put it back in. “The first time it came out, it came out by itself,” Corrales later acknowledged. “The second time, I took it out to breathe, but I didn’t drop it on purpose.” Twenty-eight seconds after going down again, Corrales semi-miraculously flipped the script when he connected with a jarring right hand, the opening salvo of a combination that sent Castillo backward and sagging against the ropes, out on his feet but still not going down. Weeks had no choice but to step in at that point. There were, of course,
proved to be less than glorious. He was kayoed by Castillo in the rematch – though Castillo wasn’t even close to making weight, some believe on purpose – then pulled out of a third fight when Castillo came in even more overweight. Corrales failed to make weight himself prior to a split decision loss to Joel Casamayor and then dropped a one- sided decision to Joshua Clottey in a welterweight bout. Perhaps he could have taken some time off and regrouped before attempting a comeback. Whether his frame of mind had been darkened by his three-bout losing streak became the fodder for speculation when, on May 7, 2007 – two years to the day after he and Castillo wrapped themselves in whatever it is that passes for glory
win. I respect his power, but I’m not concerned about getting knocked down, because I know I’ll get up.” That statement proved prophetic, as Corrales seemed to be wearing down, round by round, from Castillo’s constant pressure. By the seventh, Corrales’ left eye was puffy, purplish and all but closed, to the point that he seemed to not be picking up all of the overhand rights the Mexican
inside the ropes – he perished on a Nevada street after his motorcycle crashed into the back of a car and was hurled into oncoming traffic. Was it a way for Corrales to check out? His blood- alcohol level was far above the legal limit and he’d been charged with driving under the influence more than once before. For some boxers, risk-taking is merely an occupational hazard, part
The real “Fight of the Century” remains the classic first pairing of Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo.
that were comparable to Round 1 of Hagler-Hearns,” Bernstein reasoned. Even with the fact that stay-at- home viewers could see it on regular Showtime instead of having to pony up for pay-per-view, there were other factors that might have tamped down more widespread appreciation for what was about to go down and explain the less-than-capacity live audience for a presumably 50/50 fight involving two indisputable warriors generally recognized as the best lightweights on the planet. Some of the high-rollers who descend upon Las Vegas like locusts for major fights might have preferred to wait until the following weekend, when Felix Trinidad, a surefire Hall of Famer who had a more prominent name than either Corrales or Castillo, was to swap punches with Winky Wright at the MGM Grand in a WBC middleweight title eliminator that was to be televised by HBO. That scrap, however, yielded more yawns than thrills as Trinidad lost
every round on one judge’s scorecard and won only one of 12 on the cards submitted by the other two judges. Trinidad fought just one more time before retiring, losing another one-sided decision to Roy Jones Jr. There was ample reason for the boxing cognoscenti, if the media members who covered the sport can be described as such, to anticipate pugilistic fireworks from Corrales and Castillo. The consensus was that Corrales – taller with a longer reach, and arguably a bigger hitter – would eventually wear down the smaller Castillo and take him out, as he had done in his most recent fight, rallying from an early points deficit to retain his title with a 10th-round stoppage of Brazil’s Acelino Freitas. But any advantages that Corrales was thought to have against Castillo were at least somewhat negated, to some observers’ thinking, by the fact that he had been knocked down eight times to that point as a pro, including
Chico goes all out for the miracle finish in Round 10.
standout was landing with regularity. But, given the fact that Corrales was giving as good as he was getting and had a reputation for being at his most dangerous when in trouble, the outcome still appeared to be up for grabs. Corrales’ predicament became far more precarious early in Round 10, when Castillo sent him sprawling to the canvas with a left hook. Corrales’ mouthpiece was dislodged by the blow, but it took 23 seconds for trainer Joe Goossen, at Weeks’ direction, to clean it off and reinsert it. When the action resumed, Castillo again floored Corrales with a left hook, at which point it appeared that the downed fighter was all but finished. But he bought himself some extra time by intentionally removing his mouthpiece, dropping it and taking his time to pick it up and get to his feet.
grumblings from Castillo’s promoter, Bob Arum, that Corrales had benefited from the additional time afforded him by the two mouthpiece reinsertions. Controversy or not, the fight created indelible memories for those fortunate enough to have seen it. For a look- back story I did years later, I wrote, “Forget the hype. Forget what you were told. Forget even what you know, or think you know. Not to disparage Mayweather-Pacquiao (which took place 10 years later), the undisputed revenue- producing champion of all time. The real ‘Fight of the Century’ remains the classic first pairing of Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo. Their epic lightweight unification clash was so riveting that many consider it to be the greatest boxing match of all time.” The epilogue, at least for Corrales,
of a job description that by definition entails some degree of personal peril. For others, those who know the rush that can come with staring into the face of disaster and making it blink, it might feel as if they are indestructible, impervious to the possibility of instant tragedy. Courting danger, conquering one’s fear in the process, can almost be an aphrodisiac. Interestingly, in a story that appeared the previous summer in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Corrales downplayed any notion that he was morose and a danger to himself: “I’m only young once, and unless someone hasn’t told me something different, I only get to live once. If I couldn’t do this stuff (riding his motorcycle) now, stuff I always wanted to do, I would never get a chance to do it.”
five times in a 10th-round TKO loss to then-WBC 130-pound titleholder Floyd Mayweather Jr. on January 20, 2001. Castillo, a renowned puncher in his own right, was perceived as having the sturdier chin, having gone the distance twice in close decision losses to Mayweather in 2002. Helping prime the pump for a fight that would have been much anticipated by aficionados in any case was the fact that it was preceded two days earlier by the lavish Boxing Writers Association of America awards dinner, which was being staged in Las Vegas for the first time and drew such high-profile guests as Mayweather, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Vitali Klitschko, James Toney, Erik Morales, Chris Byrd and Shane Mosley.
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