Looking back at Diego Corrales vs. José Luis Castillo I, one of the best comebacks in boxing history
Diego Corrales walked slowly through an empty Mandalay Bay Events Center, slapping his hand on the ring apron as he passed it. He walked toward a chair and dropped into it.
He was doing an interview about his lightweight unification fight with José Luis Castillo, which would happen in five days in that ring. Corrales knew it would be a brutal fight, but he was willing to sacrifice everything to win it.
Many fighters say they’d be willing to die in the ring; Corrales is one of the extremely few who actually meant it. He’d fired his father as his trainer four years earlier for stopping his fight with Floyd Mayweather after Mayweather had knocked him down five times.
Corrales looked toward the ring and, for a second, seemed to get lost, as if he could see the coming battle unfolding. Then, he grinned devilishly and said to a reporter, “You know, I’d walk through the fires of hell if I had to to win this fight.”
The Castillo fight would be for the WBC and WBO lightweight belts and would turn out to be one of the greatest fights, and best comebacks, in the sport’s history. Showtime will rebroadcast that fight, as well as the rematch, on Friday (10 p.m. ET/PT).
Corrales was going into his third fight with Joe Goossen as his trainer when he met Castillo. Goossen was in the corner opposite Corrales, training Joel Casamayor, when Casamayor defeated Corrales on Oct. 4, 2003.
After that fight, Goossen and Casamayor split. Corrales was also searching for a trainer, and one of Goossen’s assistants reached out to Corrales to see if he’d be interested in Goossen.
“He gave a couple of choice words and he hung up,” Goossen said, chuckling.
But eventually, Corrales warmed to the idea and hired Goossen. Goossen led him to a win over Casamayor in the rematch, and then a knockout of Acelino Freitas to claim the WBO title.
At that point, their relationship was cemented. Both knew that the fight with Castillo would be brutal. Corrales’ father, Ray Woods, had urged him not to take the fight, believing Castillo was too big for him.
“He was still angry with his Dad for quitting the fight with Floyd [in 2001],” Corrales’ wife, Michelle Corrales-Lewis, told Yahoo Sports. “He was still so angry. He felt there was so much that was still unfinished. He said, ‘How dare you tell me who I can’t beat?’ In Diego’s mind in the Floyd fight, even though he had no legs, no power, no equilibrium, he believed he still could [win]. You couldn’t convince him that he didn’t have a chance.
“Looking at it in hindsight, he retained that anger. And so when his Dad said, ‘You shouldn’t fight [Castillo] because he’ll beat you,’ that really fueled Diego like no other fight had ever done. He had a whole different training ethic. He would tell me, ‘Come hell or high water, I’m going to win that fight. Either I’m going to win, or they’re going to carry me out of that ring on a stretcher.’ He always loved to fight, but his motivation in this one was the greatest of any fight that I had seen.”
What was expected to be a brutal fight was even more savage than anyone could have expected. They tore into each other from the opening bell and repeatedly hit each other with crushing shots.
Referee Tony Weeks knew going into the bout that their styles would make for an action-heavy fight, and he was prepared. That was the night that Weeks became a star, because even though the action was intense for nine full rounds, Weeks did not interfere as some referees would do because they just stood toe-to-toe and fought and didn’t need an official to break them.
Weeks understood as the fight unfolded he was working a historic battle. His job is to protect the fighters first and foremost and so he paid attention to the amount of punishment they were absorbing, which was almost like it was a car wreck.
“I had a very good sense of the magnitude of the punches because part of my evaluation of where they are in a fight as a referee is to understand what they’ve been through and how they are doing,” Weeks said. “They were each landing a lot of punches, but they were going back and forth equally.”
The 10th round was one of the great rounds in boxing history. Corrales delivered a strong ninth, and Goossen felt he may have come out overconfident in the 10th. It was a mistake, nearly of epic proportions.
“He had it going his way and he came out a little nonchalant and Castillo went, ‘Whoop, bang!’ ” Goossen said. “He just caught him in one of those mental … he slipped a little bit in the concentration factor. That started it all in the 10th round.”
He went down twice in the 10th. Each time, his mouthpiece came out.
The crowd was in a frenzy, sensing a dramatic ending. Goossen, though, looked at Corrales and felt he was OK, because he seemed clear-eyed. After the second knockdown, when Weeks took a point from him for the mouthpiece coming out, Corrales argued.
Goossen saw that as a sign that he was still clear-headed enough to know what was happening. It was difficult for Corrales-Lewis, then known as Michelle Corrales, to watch her husband take that beating, but she knew he was about that life. But on one of the knockdowns, Corrales found her in the crowd.
“He was down and I was trying to look through the ropes to see him and he looked over at me and he let me know he was OK,” she said.
She knew, though, there was no stopping the fight.
After the second knockdown, Corrales got up and was taken by Weeks to his corner so Goossen could wash off the mouthpiece. It was a clear mouthpiece and Goossen had a bucket of water and ice.
“If you dropped the mouthpiece into that, it was hard to see it,” Goossen said, grinning.
So he may have taken a little extra time to clean the mouthpiece before putting it in.
When the fight resumed, Weeks was bracing to stop the fight. Castillo went in for the kill. And Corrales landed a hellacious shot that snapped Castillo’s head back. He sagged onto the ropes and Corrales, one of the sport’s best finishers, pounced.
As he was firing several unanswered shots to the head, Weeks jumped in to stop it.
It was the end of one of the most remarkable fights ever staged.
“[Former referee] Richard Steele once told me, ‘Sometimes as a referee, you’re blessed to have a signature fight,’ and for me, no doubt, that was mine,” Weeks said. “Nothing has surpassed it. It’s no doubt the highlight of my career. All these years later, we’re still talking about it.”
What hasn’t been talked about enough is the aftermath. The toll the bout took on Corrales was enormous.
Goossen and Corrales-Lewis were with him in the hospital room when the doctor walked in with a beaker holding Corrales’ urine.
“It looked like tomato juice,” Goossen said, as it was filled with blood.
A few months later the rematch was signed, which Goossen was against. He said one had to be sadistic to want to see them fight again.
And Corrales-Lewis said her husband knew he would never be the same. He had blood in his urine for a long time after. For two months, he was so sore he couldn’t bend over to tie his shoes, so she did it for him every day.
“We were sitting in the backyard talking after the rematch was signed and Diego made it clear that he knew it was too soon,” she said. “I always think of that moment in the backyard. He was explaining to me to be prepared if something bad happened [in the rematch]. He said, ‘I know you know I’m willing to die in that ring. If I don’t make it out, I want you to know how much I love you.’ I told him to stop talking that way.
“He just knew. I think when he started training camp for the rematch, his eyes were still black and blue. He still had some swelling. There wasn’t fear in his voice, but to me, it was like a guy who was getting ready to go off to war. He was willing to accept whatever the outcome was. He was preparing me to let me know that he understood there was a chance he’d die, but that it was his choice. Right after [the first fight], he had this great urgency to have kids. I think he knew part of him was gone and that he’d given up part of himself in that fight, and he wanted to have kids before it ended.”
Five months later, they engaged in a rematch which was spirited but lacked the sustained action and drama of the original.
Castillo caught Corrales with a left hook to the chin in the fourth round. As Corrales got up, the referee reached the 10-count and it was a fourth-round knockout. They were supposed to fight a third time, on June 3, 2006, but Castillo missed weight and the bout was canceled and never held.
Two years to the day after his greatest professional night, on May 7, 2007, Diego Corrales was driving a motorcycle when he bumped into the back of a car ahead of him. His body was thrown 100 feet. He died on the scene. Just moments earlier, he’d texted his daughter and told her he was on his way home.
He died not far from his home, on a road where his widow still shops for groceries to this day.
As police processed the scene that night, a streetlight cast an image. In the distance was the Mandalay Bay Resort.
It’s hard for Corrales-Lewis not to think of those two nights, May 7, 2005, and May 7, 2007. On one night, she watched her husband get beaten brutally but score a massive, career-defining win. On the other, she went to see his dead body laying in the street.
“Diego was hurting a long, long time after that [first fight with Castillo],” she said. “The next week, there was another fight and we went down to do interviews and Diego tried to hide it. But he was aching and hurting so badly. He went through so much, but he wanted that win so badly. It meant everything to him.
“I know what he went through. He was never the same after that. Just imagine you go through all of that and you don’t win. Imagine what that would be like.”
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