Harrowing and ghastly was the abrupt end of this last throwback. In his name introductions indenturing a defiant postmortem impression of a self-relishing curse and wicked bite, with the kind of jubilation contorting his upper torso to shake uncontrollably as if possessed by invasions of rattlesnakes laid before his rival’s eyes to witness right across the ring. That defined signature wasn’t the sort of one that Middleweight champion Jermain Taylor does in wiping his soles across the arena like a matador would have in bullfights before slaying it. This was one about a sense of trying to assort the devilish ones from the anointed. And oddly enough the bad ones often capitulated me about the bedeviling Cyrus character in the movie Jungle Fever; in which “Gator” flipped in the good reverend doctor’s house, and instead of leaving well enough alone; saved the last dance for Mama slithering in the presence of defying orders darkening their home.

When I first spoke to the Sacramento native before his first match with
Jose Luis Castillo, I sensed a real earthy individual who had the time to talk
on every level with just about any concept that you would have as a writer.
I also held the same sense of him being that way for everyone. What fighter would not only take the time to dwell a bit more in explaining techniques going into a fight beforehand, like a Mozart breaking it down to something simplistic?
He not only discussed tossing assorted punches for the sakes of throwing them, but also by using both hands in measured proclivities of alignment to making him fall into them, which isn’t easy as you might think.

It seems as if it were yesterday about that distinctly patient, sometimes analytical and discerning educational voice of his was cemented as in a way to get you to look at things a little differently — by which is to not necessarily say to sway you one way or another, but by actions to put you at ease, not so much with mere words. He was for me a warrior with the most conscientious deeply thinking mind that I have ever encountered in a fighter.
Provocatively, he appeared to me as a pre-70’s precursor to the revolutionaries, you know, when needed wittier then a fox like poet-lariat cofounder Young Lords Party Felipe Luciano—notwithstanding aesthetics, representing the dignified farmer, blue-collar worker, or voice of the disenfranchised.

A dying art when coming to think making terms about a social change through civil rights administrations had their infancy; discovered in places where abolitionists would cringe at just about anybody who walked the face of the planet accompanied mean spirited disingenuousness about people who weren’t exactly assimilating to another kind of flawed system that hadn’t worked for everybody. There’s something to be said about a man who stands their ground without tweaking around its essentials or screwing around with the essences.

Then tragedy with a week just completing for that May month about the former IBF/WBO Super Featherweight, and WBC/WBO Lightweight champion
Diego “Chico” Corrales (40-5, 33 KO’s) found on a freeway sprawled dead struck home. Corrales, hitting a vehicle out in front of him riding his brand new racer's crotch-rocket motorcycle was killed instantly.

Chico Corrales had so much more to look forward to before his life was cut short. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to experiment at 140, jumping directly to 147 in a ten round campaigned losing effort against a durable Joshua Clottey last April.

He was as proud about his ethnic Columbian-Mexican roots as he an American, and as a Latin fighter inherited the same ammo of toughness the pro ranks have emerged having those types of flamboyancies two centuries. How history remembers Diego Corrales at its levels will best be talked and discussed about for years to come.

As a junior lightweight Diego liberally set its path to establish the lower weight categories persistently at a steady pace; with that presence embodied in the
lead to slice all comers to the left hooking scheme of making you fall prey to his punch; whenever you weren’t a beacon recipient of his sizzling right crosses that left you anesthetized. Listen kid, those capricious uppercuts I’m leaving alone for susceptibilities sakes. Nobody shot them better down the middle in lieu like he did provided they landed.

Dealt with his inner demons about domestic disputes, served his time, forged ahead in placing a past behind him. He gained more sophistication and knowledge reading books in a closed environment then an opened one,
and for that reason he grew intellectually. Might have even internalized
a kind of solitude to draw from in his own polite way to reaching out.

Chico relayed conversations about boxing scientifically in that approach of a sport that by definition was ruled as barbarism, but to hear him speaking so softly a subject, you couldn’t help but to admonish the genuine humanitarianism in his persona for the safety about fighters.

He argued with ring Dr. Margaret Goodman October 4, 2003, Las Vegas, NV,
protesting her for stopping the first fight with Joel Casamayor at the end of six rounds. Corrales suffered a gaping wound inside his mouth that the doctor completed a judgment call on. Redemption came the following year March 6th 2004 in Connecticut when he turned over that blemish, favoring him the second time with a spit-decision win — and gained the vacated WBO junior lightweight strap in the process.

He then went up against the man who vacated it one class; in the 135-pound division of WBO Lightweight champion Acelino Freitas; an unbelievable specimen at 130, who held a win over Joel Casamayor in his first and only try. Freitas was now at a higher weight having gotten by barely against Z-Man Raheem; that most boxing strategist would begin to wager rather heavily on the payola end for Freitas to beat Corrales; if they wanted to make any. Diego was the favorite, and the sentimental one of the fight. Again, back at the scene in Mashantucket, CT, August 7, 2004, Corrales converted every would-be cynic and onlooker within earshot of an Apple computer in their hands that his home baked goods were here to stay.

Chico hit Freitas so hard the side his head, that inexplicably the visually wounded Ex-champion got up, shook no, and then proceeded to walk insolently to his corner in a total distraught manner — this between the standard eight count that was being administered by referee Mike Ortega, who was just as mesmerized about it as Freitas was. Corrales got the technical knockout in the tenth, and forced PoPo Freitas to contemplate hard for retirement.

What was being lined up however, would be a fight that would align all ages
of the sweet sciences to consolidate in unison, a happening that would make
the popularity of the UFC, and lightweight Roberto Duran to grind their molars
on. Top Rank big boss Bob Arum’s fuming declarations, “You don’t knockout my Mexicans” swiftly stormed out the conference call, and we never heard from Mr. Arum for the rest of that duration again. WBC Lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo had a solidly square protruding chin to absorb artillery, and the kind of reputation to disembowel fragments about you bit by bit. A ruthless body puncher with either hand, Castillo was to embark on the twin-title unification against his foe Chico Corrales, for Diego’s newly acquired WBO scrap.

Each sounding as confident as the other, and you got a sense that neither would quit fighting inside that ring, unless four turnbuckles suddenly collapsed where huge lightening bolts had struck seeping gapes of fiery holes. Put it this way, what some of us got to see couldn’t be replicated if you had placed triplicate Hagler-Hearns DVD middleweight rounds on the burner with a backup crew, drawing more audacious melodrama for your money about an outcome as to what our eyes had definitively witnessed come before us. Chico’s “I’m leaving with those two belts come hell or high water on May 7th” statement for Castillo keeping him from the championship was depth defining.

The May date of the Four-time champion’s death — wasn’t shy a day for two years ago May 7, 2005, in which Diego would have liked to hear that we were happy just for the one fight that he gave us. And what he produced in that first fight that night in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV, with Jose Luis Castillo was one enshrined reference to being with the stars eternally and infamously!

Corrales could have well walked away after that fight. May have relied on his culinary skills as a cook. Didn’t have to lollygag between weights to subject him to such harsh indefinite dieting like he had. He never marginalized himself, and for that I will always remember most about him, his defiant fighting spirit.

As a member of this sport I am deeply saddened by the Corrales tragedy.

I remember saying to myself that somehow, sometime, somewhere, I may write
a tribute to this great, and I still am too shaken up to at the moment, but he deserves to be written more then once.

The Suzuki actual purchase for the bill of sale showed that it was bought April 21st, found mangled as they draped Corrales over a sheet at the scene. Promoter Gary Shaw commented to the Associated Press on the 29-year old this way, “He fought recklessly, and he lived recklessly,” adding, “That was his style.”

The bike purchased exactly two-weeks after the Clottey fight; made about as much perplexing sense in the unsuspecting manner it created for an induced instant rapture; as it did without an involuntary blooming fully blinked eyelash
to do much speculating on how in the world he could be gone away like that?

So Diego, I’m going to leave you with a quote of mine, “Heroes are made,
and not created. Though fragments can be contrived someplace and readily made in concert to cohabit that empty spacing with no less the dichotomy,
a hero standing often does so in desolate existences alone.”

Diego “Chico” Corrales

August 25, 1977-May 7, 2007
R.I.P.