Marquez – Diaz II: Card Worth Watching

July 28th, 2010

It’s rare that any two fighters coming off losses could headline a major PPV, let alone not take any flack from fans for having to pay for their fight. However, what lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) and challenger Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KO’s) did in their first meeting last year warrants attention from fight fans and a spectacular undercard has left no one complaining about the PPV price tag.

Their first fight was an absolute slugfest. The younger Diaz applying pressure in the early rounds getting ahead of the older, but still very effective, Marquez. However, Marquez’s counterpunching eventually busted Diaz open in the 8th round and in the 9th, with blood from a cut flowing into Diaz’s eyes, Marquez knocked out Diaz with a picture perfect uppercut. The fight took place in February 2009 and at the end of the HBO broadcast of the bout, commentator Jim Lampley said "Feb. 28 is a little bit early to proclaim something fight of the year, but good luck to the rest of the sport producing something that good.” In the eyes of Ring Magazine, espn.com and the Boxing Writer’s Association of America, no other fight could match Marquez – Diaz and it was named fight of the year.

Now 17 months later Marquez – Diaz prepare to do battle again. In the interim between their first fight and now, Marquez has fought once and lost to Floyd Mayweather in a welterweight bout. Diaz also moved up in weight. In two junior welterweight fights, he went 1-1 against Paulie Malignaggi. First he won a controversial unanimous decision last August before losing the rematch 4 months later. Neither fighter has fought since losing to Mayweather and Malignaggi respectively. Yet, their rematch is still highly anticipated.

A win for Marquez will probably mark his last fight in the lightweight division. A win probably puts him in line for some interesting fights in the deep junior welterweight division where a potential bout with titleholder Amir Khan awaits.

A win for Diaz will finally earn him universal recognition as the best lightweight in the world. Despite unifying 3 major world titles in 2007, Joel Casamayor was the lineal lightweight champ at the time. However, a controversial decision win over Jose Armando Santa Cruz in a title defense led most boxing media outlets to rank Diaz ahead of Casamayor despite Casamayor having the lightweight championship lineage in his possession.

Add in a stellar undercard featuring undefeated prospects Danny Jacobs (20-0, 17 KO’s) taking on Dmitriy Pirog (16-0, 13 KO’s) for a vacant middleweight title (that the WBO wrongly stripped from true middleweight champion Sergio Martinez), a crossroads fight between the previously mentioned Joel Casamayor (37-4-1, 22 KO’s) and former titleholder Robert Guerrero (26-1-1, 18 KO’s) in a junior welterweight tilt, and former 5 time world title challenger Rocky Juarez (28-6, 20 KO’s) meets Jorge Linares (28-1, 18 KO’s) in another enticing bout where a loss could spell the end of either fighters time competing at boxing’s highest level.

So Marquez – Diaz II may be a PPV headlined by two guys last seen losing, but it’s still certainly worth watching.