A portrait hangs proudly in Gary Shaw’s office in Totowa, N.J., a suburb approximately 23 miles from New York City.
Pictured is Diego Corrales, his hands resting on his promoter’s shoulders, his exhausted body draped over Shaw’s after the battle of his life – of anyone’s life, really.
The date is May 7, 2005, and Corrales had just accomplished the unthinkable, forever etching his spot in boxing lore. After nine grueling rounds with Jose Luis Castillo that would have been enough to earn the bout Fight of the Year honors, the 10th put it over the top. It was a round nobody watching — on Showtime or in person at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas — would soon forget.
Castillo had just dropped Corrales for the second time in a razor-thin lightweight unification title bout. Corrales wobbled over to his corner after again spitting out his mouthguard, a move designed to gain precious extra moments to recover. Referee Tony Weeks deducted a point for the infraction, putting Corrales in the kind of hole he would never recover from , a rare 10-6 round, if he even made it out of the round on two feet.
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Castillo’s promoter Bob Arum was incensed at the time-buying tactic after the fight, comparing it to the famed long count in the rematch between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in 1927.
Renowned trainer Joe Goosen cleaned off the mouthpiece, slid it back into Corrales’ mouth and dispensed the best advice possible in a way only Goosen could. “You better (expletive) get inside him now,” Goosen instructed. Corrales nodded and the rest was history.
“Candidly, I thought the fight was over,” Shaw tells USA TODAY Sports 10 years later. “So as a promoter I’m thinking about what I want to say at the press conference. … Next thing I saw was the referee wave off the fight. … I know it’s kind of hard to believe, but I had an out-of-body experience. I didn’t go right in the ring where I normally would run into the ring. I was frozen in my seat for a moment. And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. You like shake your head and want to make sure it is what you think you just saw.”
Corrales was spent following the second knockdown, but somehow collected himself and mounted a rally for the ages. Comebacks are not rare in boxing, but to stop your opponent in the very same round you went down twice? Unheard of.
Corrales was a renewed man after the second count from Weeks, and began to counter and pick off Castillo’s shots. He then put the Mexican on the ropes and unloaded. Castillo ate a bundle of vicious punches and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, forcing Weeks to jump in and save him at 2:06.
“I have seen many fights where moments are especially exciting, but never before had I witnessed a fight at this elite level with the amount of sustained back-and-forth action that never seemed to ebb,” HBO Sports president Ken Hershman, the GM of Showtime Sports at the time, told USA TODAY Sports. “And as the rounds progressed, the determination of the fighters increased, and neither fighter dared take a step backward. The fact that neither fighter quit at any time before that fateful 10th round was astonishing in its own right. Then the 10th round happened, and the event became a once-in-a-lifetime sporting event with a Hollywood ending.”
‘ALL-LATINO GATTI-WARD’
Indeed, it wasn’t just the conclusion of the bout that made it so great. It was also the nine rounds before it. Back and forth they went, each man trying to top one another in a brutal display of machismo. Besides the action, this wasn’t just any fight. This was two of the best fighters in the world competing for bragging rights – and two titles – in the glamorous lightweight division.
“It was a Vegas-based, all-Latino Gatti-Ward,” said Lou DiBella, a man who knows a thing or two about great fights from his time overseeing HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” series. “It wasn’t a lot of science; it was just my kind of fight. It was two friggin’ guys that went to war. It was fun, and it was like the kind of boxing I think that fans most want to see. Right now in boxing, what we need is more Gatti-Wards, more Corrales-Castillos.”
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The pair met again five months later, but the magic was sapped after Castillo failed to make weight, missing the 135-pound limit by 3 ½ pounds. The rematch was a good action fight, but they were unable to replicate the first bout, which was fitting really. How could anyone recreate that night, even the same two men? Castillo scored the KO of Corrales in Round 4, but it wasn’t really seen as revenge or evening the score with the unfair weight advantage. In fact, Castillo didn’t even win his titles back.
“It’s very, very difficult for a fight to ever to live up to the first fight,” Shaw said. “I didn’t have those expectations, but I can tell you there was real bad blood between Diego and Castillo at that point. … Castillo believed he had the fight won, and afterward he didn’t even think the fight should have been stopped.”
A victorious Diego Corrales after winning the WBC lightweight crown by a 10th-round TKO over Jose Luis Castillo on May 7, 2005, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. (AP)
LINKED TOGETHER FOREVER
Corrales fought twice more after the second meeting with Castillo, a split-decision loss in a rematch with Joel Casamayor and then a stoppage defeat to Joshua Clottey in a misguided move to 147 pounds. There would be no third fight with Castillo after Corrales died tragically in a motorcycle accident in Las Vegas on the two-year anniversary – May 7, 2007 – of the instant classic.
Castillo announced his retirement in March 2010 but still fights on, though he’s a shell of his former self. Welterweight slugger Ruslan Provodnikov beat him down last November.
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Still today, Castillo is thought by many as the only man to defeat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a professional bout. Mayweather got the nod in their highly controversial first encounter before definitively winning the rematch. Corrales, too, fought Mayweather, a highly anticipated bout at the time. He was stopped in what’s widely considered the best performance of Mayweather’s career.
“Both Jose Luis Castillo and “Chico” Corrales were more than just action fighters,” Showtime analyst Al Bernstein said Friday. “And, let no one say that their extraordinary first fight was a brawl. It was a skillfully fought pitched battle which remains one of the greatest examples of terrific inside fighting ever on display in a boxing ring. It is the best fight I have ever announced in my 35-year career, It is basically Hagler vs. Hearns times three — it last three times longer.”
Corrales and Castillo will always be remembered fondly for what they did on May 7, 2005. Like Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward, the fighters will be linked together forever.
“(It) should go down, in my opinion, as the greatest non-heavyweight fight in history,” Hershman said. “So to pay tribute to these two warriors a decade later is not only fitting, but undeniably deserving. … Corrales vs. Castillo is one of those fights that stands in its own unique place in the sport’s history, and that what led to it being so special was a confluence of styles, personalities, and the moment that cannot be replicated.”
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