The Juan Manuel Marquez-Juan Diaz sequel to the 2009 Fight of the Year on July 31 at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay has a simple marketing label: The Rematch. Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya and CEO Richard Schaefer also could have called it The Relief.
Let’s just say that Marquez-Diaz II and its compelling undercard are a timely refuge from talks – or whatever they were – for Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. A couple of testaments, old and new, could be filled with all that has been said, written, rumored, alleged and denied about a fight that has yet to happen and perhaps never will.
Attention on Pacquiao-Mayweather is sucking the wind out of a sport full of good stories, of which there are many on the Diaz-Marquez card. There is Robert Guerrero, who faces Joel Casamayor. He fights for his wife, Casey, who has fought leukemia and knocked the cancer into remission.
There’s Diaz, an aspiring lawyer and proud son of Mexican immigrants who is fighting to keep his career alive while he argues for rights that he believes are under assault in the wake of Arizona’s tough new immigration law.
There’s Rocky Juarez, who faces Jorge Linares. Juarez, who is 0-5-1 in world title fights, was robbed at the 2000 Olympics of a gold medal and left with silver that he says reflects a career full of frustration. Yet, he is still pursuing a world title, still trying turn silver into gold.
Guerrero, Diaz and Juarez are just a few of the stories that once put a gritty face on a sport that, in large part, has been about comebacks, second chances and redemption. Now, however, all of the focus appears to be on nothing, which worked on Seinfeld but won’t in boxing.
It’s been there before, following Mike Tyson to nowhere. Tyson was the train wreck that kept everybody looking only for the next accident instead of the next prospect. Tyson moved on and mixed martial arts moved in.
De La Hoya, Pacquiao and Mayweather helped boxing diversify and it began to recover. Yet, suddenly it is back at an intersection where one story, and only one, seems to matter. Who to blame? From promoters to regulators, the usual suspects are there.
But the internet, the only media that covers the sport regularly anymore, also deserves its share. Determining a good story isn’t much of a choice anymore. It’s all about numbers, hits. Plug in the right words and you’ve got a winner recognized by the Google algorithm. That means Pacquiao and Mayweather, over and over again.
The internet equation often means the media follows the mob instead of the stories. Guerrero, Diaz and Juarez offer an old-school, perhaps quaint opportunity to reverse that trend during the next week. Each has different motivations. Yet, each is confronted with a fight the looms as decisive in what they do next.
“I see this as a win-win situation,’’ Diaz said during a conference call when asked about the significance attached to chances at avenging his 2009 loss by knockout to Marquez. “This fight is going to prove to me whether I have it or I don’t. This fight right here is what’s going to take me to the top and make me the super star that I’ve been wanting to be in the lightweight division.
“But if it doesn’t happen then that means it’s not meant to be and I’ll move on to bigger and better things, which could be start from the bottom and pick up the pieces to rebuild myself up or just completely do a 360 – I mean a 180 – and just go in the opposite direction.
“This fight here, a lot of people have been mentioning to me that it’s a do-or-die fight. Well, I don’t think it is do-or-die. I think it’s win-win because either I become a world champion once again and become a super star or it opens up doors for me to do other things and focus on other aspects of my life.’’
Real-life.
For now and perhaps forever, that represents a real chance at future business, unlike Pacquiao-Mayweather, which is beginning to look like fantasy that will never be more than a video game.