Nostalgia touring Houston

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Arena Theatre in Houston, Juan “Baby Bull” Diaz and “Mile High” Mike Alvarado will return to prizefighting on an UniMás telecast. Diaz will fight a Mexican lightweight named Fernando Garcia, and Alvarado will fight a Mexican welterweight named Saul Corral. Garcia and Corral appear to be statement-type opponents; Diaz and Alvarado will either use such men to make flattering statements about their futures by dominating them, or there will be statements made by others about overdue retirements.

I’ll be there because I did not expect to be ringside again for a fight featuring either man, let alone both, and I do not expect to have such a chance again, and I wish our sport comprised more men like Diaz and Alvarado once were.

I have been ringside for four of Juan Diaz’s last six fights, and while I did not realize it till time came to write this column, in retrospect, I’m glad it’s been that way. I knew little about the Baby Bull when I sat ringside for his 2006 match against Fernando Angulo at Chase Field, but his activity was infectious, and his selfbelief exceptional for a fluffy lightstriker. Volume punchers, men like Diaz and Timothy Bradley, are compelling fighters because of their limitations, because their offenses are more pesky than concussive, unlike sluggers’, and their defenses are steady applications of offense with a dusting of head movement, unlike boxers’.

There are few fighters whose style I enjoy more than Diaz’s – and one of those few is Juan Manuel Marquez, the man whose style ruined Diaz in one of the very best matches I’ve covered from ringside. That match happened in Houston more than seven years ago, a fact that dates this column sympathetically or ruthlessly whatever one’s philosophy of time, and it marked an apogee of sorts for Marquez, a moment of lightweight supremacy just before his own greed and his promoter’s greed and guilelessness got him humiliated in a sparring match with the world’s best welterweight, Floyd Mayweather. (The lesson from that match: Tossing boulders at altitude and drinking your own piss, training in the naturalest way possible in other words, is dimwitted; a year or so later, Juan Manuel contacted Memo and things got supernatural for his second campaign at welter.)

By the time Diaz fought Marquez the first time, in a Toyota Center that was full and loud, he was no longer undefeated, having been beaten by Nate Campbell in a Don King-special event conducted in a Quintana Roo bullring, the culmination of a weird promotional relationship initiated in 2006 when King, realizing he’d never sellout a Phoenix baseball stadium with a Belarusian and Shannon Briggs, heard a Latino ticketseller named Diaz might be about to sign a contract with Golden Boy Promotions, and finding Diaz’s pen dangled cautiously over his new Golden Boy contract, King slipped a King contract in its stead.

Diaz and King were not a sensible match, and eventually Diaz was with Golden Boy Promotions, and through fifteen minutes appeared ready to devour Marquez at Toyota Center. Those of us ringside fretted openly about the cost of Marquez’s pride; Diaz did not strike hard enough to unseam Marquez with one punch or 20, and as Marquez looked old and worn and Diaz appeared much the larger man, we verily worried something tragic might befall Marquez before the 12th round concluded.

Goodness, but we were wrong. Marquez made of Diaz his most gorgeous finish (until the Pacquiao icing years later), stubbornly wagering his straight punches would best Diaz’s crooked ones no matter their quantitative disparity. Diaz fell prey to the uppercut like every volume puncher must, tallying shots on Marquez so feverishly he neglected to notice his weight fully spilled overknee, and Marquez, his era’s master closer, brought Diaz’s unconsciousness with a customary precision and lack of ruth.

Their rematch was a dud fought in a soulless casino while the Vegas economy experienced gravity in a vacuum. And with that the Baby Bull was finished with boxing and ready to become a lawyer. Initially I didn’t care when he returned because it felt, like most of our sport’s comebacks, a fated mix of betrayal and desperation.

Writing of which, “Mile High” Mike will be in Saturday’s co-main, his first ringside sighting since the autohumiliation he perpetrated on himself and his fellow Coloradoans 14 months ago in his second rematch with Brandon Rios. The standard ploy, changing trainers and promising rededication, was not going to be enough for Alvarado to sell his return, and so he attended rehab and got married.

Promoter Top Rank forgives Alvarado his numerous transgressions because Alvarado atones properly; Alvarado has fought five times since 2012, when his career was reresurrected after legal issues aplenty, and what fights were not with Rios were with the aforementioned Marquez and Ruslan Provodnikov – five consecutive fights with any combination of Provodnikov and Rios and Marquez exceeds in peril the product of every 2015 PBC main event multiplied by 50, and so Alvarado gets forgiven. The beating Alvarado took from Provodnikov in 2013 was mansized and vigorous; it was the only time I recall seeing at ringside a defending champion wince in the first round of a title fight, as Alvarado did after several of Provodnikov’s facinorous blows befell him.

I’m an unapologetic fan of Diaz and Alvarado both; I’ve traveled to Nevada and Colorado to see prime versions of the men and consider those trips time and resources well-consumed. Neither is good enough, anymore, for me to leave the state of Texas to see, but either is worth the 200-mile drive to Houston, and the two of them together, a treat. This nostalgia tour continues along happily.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry