Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo were ready to give boxing one of its most anticipated title fights in years. Then Castillo couldn’t make weight, forcing promoters to scramble to save the fight at all.
After a weigh-in bizarre even by boxing standards, promoters huddled late Friday to try and salvage the rematch of the classic brawl the two fought five months ago.
Everyone involved said they wanted the fight to go on, and it likely will with a special weigh-in on Saturday, fight day. But it would no longer be for the WBC title because Castillo didn’t come near making the 135-pound weight limit.
“I apologize to everyone for my fighter,” Castillo’s manager, Fernando Beltran, said. “It is a sign of disrespect not to come in on weight.”
The weigh-in outdoors on the Las Vegas Strip lasted nearly two hours as Castillo tried to sweat off the weight, only to come in heavier on his final two tries. His personal physician was suspended and fined by Nevada boxing authorities for allegedly putting his foot under the scale to try and make his fighter look lighter.
“He was manipulating the scales to try and make the weight,” said Bob Arum, who promotes Castillo.
While Corrales weighed the class limit of 135 pounds, Castillo weighed 137 on his first try. He came back an hour later and weighed 138 1/2, and weighed the same on a third try another 40 minutes later.
Castillo was fined 10 percent of his purse, $120,000, half of which goes to Corrales and half to the Nevada commission, for not making the weight.
Arum and co-promoter Gary Shaw put on a show of their own, yelling at each other next to the stage as they tried to figure out a way to salvage the fight. The talks centered on a second weigh-in Saturday afternoon at which Castillo would have to make 147 pounds or pay $75,000 a pound for each pound over to Corrales.
Fighters often weigh well over the weight limit on the day of the fight. Most weigh-ins are held the day before the bout.
Arum blamed Castillo’s doctor, identified as Armando Barak, for interfering with his training and bringing the fighter to the scale well over the limit.
“The doctor came in and fired the trainer two weeks ago. We just found out that he’s been without a trainer since then,” said Arum, who promotes Castillo.
Promoters had a reason to find a way to compromise. They had sold most of the seats at the 18,000-seat UNLV campus arena and were anticipating good pay-per-view sales for the rematch of a fight that thrilled boxing fans when the two first met.
Corrales was to get $2 million for the fight to $1.2 million for Castillo. But there was more at stake than just money and titles for two boxers who put on a show for the ages the first time around.
Their first fight was a magnificent battle even before Corrales got off the canvas twice in the 10th round to stop Castillo in a round that will long live in boxing lore.
Both gave each other the kind of beating that shortens and sometimes ends the careers of lesser fighters, but both seemed eager to fight again even with such a short time between fights.
Both vowed not to give an inch to the other. Both said they were ready to leave everything they have in the ring.
“This is a war of attrition. This is the final battle,” Corrales said. “I am here and I will die in that ring before I give up what I have.”
What Corrales has is more than just the title he won from Castillo in the May 8 fight that brought back memories of a fight 20 years earlier when Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns brawled for three rounds in their middleweight epic.
At the age of 28 he has stamped himself as a warrior in a sport that values his kind, a throwback fighter who could have boxed Castillo from the outside but decided instead to go toe-to-toe with him because it was the manly thing to do.
“I love what happened,” Corrales said. “I always wanted my war and I got it. You always wonder if you have it in you to do it. I was glad to see I did.”
The fight was so brutal that the Nevada Athletic Commission ordered both fighters to undergo MRIs before they could fight a second time. The commission also put its most experienced referee, Joe Cortez, in charge of the rematch and tightened rules so that spitting out the mouthpiece will not buy time for a fighter.
Corrales, whose suspect chin and huge punching power reminds many of a smaller version of Hearns, was a slight 6-5 favorite in the rematch against a durable and veteran Mexican fighter who knows only one way of fighting — straight forward.
