DAVID DIAZ

updated May 08, 2008

At the age of 30, David is a 10-year pro. A former four-time U.S. National amateur champion and 1996 U.S. Olympian, he made his debut in November, 1996. David won the WBC interim lightweight world title in his last fight in August, 2006, with a sensational come-from-behind knockout against defending champion Jose Armando Santa Cruz.

Boxing columnist Graham Houston reported, "When a fighter simply refuses to give up, great things can happen, as David Diaz demonstrated with his dramatic 10th-round victory over Jose Armando Santa Cruz... After nine rounds, the fight looked a lost cause for Diaz. The 30-year-old from Chicago was well behind in the scoring. Diaz was looking swollen and battered around the eyes. He needed to stop Santa Cruz to win, and we all knew that Diaz was not a seriously hard hitter - or thought we knew - because the left uppercut that he landed from his southpaw stance in the 10th round was surely one of the great punches of the year."

The win against Santa Cruz also made David the WBC's mandatory challenger and when no agreement could be reached during the free negotiation period with WBC champion Joel Casamayor, the fight went to a purse offer. Casamayor's representatives did not participate and pursued another fight, and Casamayor was stripped of the title. According to WBC rules, David took his place as champion.

An aggressive lefthander who always makes exciting fights, David is undefeated - 6-0-1 - since his only loss in February, 2005.

David said, "I'm going to try to get inside on him and see if I can work his body, and basically, just try to outhustle him and try to break him down. That's pretty much the same M.O. I do all the time. It's been working for me so far, so why change it?

"I can box when I need to and fight when I need to. I'm pretty aggressive. I get in there and mix it up first. I'm not afraid to get hit.

"Like my trainer says, it only takes a little bit more, like 10 more minutes of a workout, to be champ, you know what I'm saying? You just got to do it just so much more harder in order for you to get what you want. If you just want to be a decent fighter, then just be a decent fighter. But if you want to be one of the best, then you got to work and train hard, and do what you got to do in order to become the best. You got to sacrifice. There's a lot in becoming a champ."

In his last fight on 8-12-06 in Las Vegas, NV, he TKO'd defending champion Jose Armando Santa Cruz (23-1): the bout was co-featured with the Oleg Maskaev-Hasim Rahman main event at the Thomas & Mack Center; it was an exciting fight and a stunning come-from-behind knockout win; David started fast - he won the 1st and 3rd rounds on all three scorecards but Santa Cruz, four inches taller at five-foot ten, dominated the fight after that; he consistently generally outworked David, landed the harder punches, and swept rounds four through nine on all three scorecards; but David came on strongly in the 10th round - he scored a knockdown with a left uppercut that put Santa Cruz flat on his back; he got up, but David scored another knockdown with a series of punches; Santa Cruz got up again, but David rocked him again and the referee stopped the fight at 2:26; after nine rounds, Santa Cruz led by scores of 88-83, 88-83, 87-84; after the fight, David said, "I told you we would steal the show. I studied two of his videotapes and I discovered he can't take it to the body. I won this for Chicago and I promised my mother I would win the fight."...

On 6-16-06 in Cicero, IL, he won a 12 round unanimous decision against late substitute Cristian Favela (11-10-4): David dominated most of the fight, but Favela rallied in the late rounds and David's left eye was swollen badly; scored 120-108, 119-109, 116-112...

On 3-17-06 in Chicago, IL, he won a 10 round unanimous decision against Silverio Ortiz (16-8): it was a good fight, and several rounds were close; David was cut over his right eye - ruled by a clash of heads - in the 1st round, and Ortiz staggered him in the 2nd; Ortiz rocked David in the 4th round and his glove touched the canvas, but it was not ruled a knockdown; David rallied and rocked Ortiz with a series of punches in the 7th round, and both fought fought hard for the rest of the fight; most observers thought the decision could go either way, but the judges scored 97-93, 96-93, 96-93; after the fight, Davis said, "I didn't want them to stop the fight, I don't like to win that way. The cut blurred me up a bit, but I didn't want the ref to know it was bothering me. I felt I did enough to win. I don't feel ashamed of my fight. I've had bad cuts, but not that bad."

1996 U.S. Olympic representative, 139 pounds...1996 National Golden Gloves champion, 139 pounds...1994 National Golden Gloves champion, 139 pounds ...1993 National Golden Gloves champion, 139 pounds ...1992 National Jr. Olympic champion, 132 pounds...

1996 Olympics: in his first fight in Atlanta on 7-24-96 he stopped Jacobo Garcia of the Virgin Islands at 2:27 of the 3rd round; in his second fight on 7-28-96 he lost a 14-6 decision against Oktay Urkal of Germany, who went on to win the silver medal...

1996 Olympic Trials: David beat LeChaunce Shepherd and Larry Nicholson in his first two fights, and Zab Judah in the finals; David beat Judah again in the Box-Offs...

David said, "There were nine children in my family, five boys and four girls and I was the youngest. They were all born in Mexico, I was the only one born here in Chicago. My dad had been coming to the U.S. since 1950, maybe '52. Our family was from the state of Guerrero. My mother is from a little town that you can only get there by boat, it's called Acatlan. My dad is from Las Mesitas, a town that probably doesn't exist anymore. There was only about two houses there. My father used to stay out in Sacramento, California, you know, working the fields like any other Mexican immigrant who came out to work. Then he finally settled here in Chicago and he brought over my mom and a year later, my brothers and sisters came. Then I came.

"One of my brothers used to fight and he got me interested in it. He only did it for a month or two. He took me to the gym one day but it was closed. My dad took me the next day and it was open, and I started working out. The first day I sparred, I fell in love with it. I was eight years old and I've been boxing ever since. I ended up having about 175 amateur fights. [note: reportedly 160-16] I won four Chicago Golden Gloves in a row at 139 pounds, from '93 to '96."...

After winning his first 13 pro fights through September, 2000, David took two years off from boxing before returning in September, 2002; he said, "It was just like, a horrible year. I had a death in the family, my oldest brother passed away out in Mexico. He was 45. We hardly seen each other because he was in Mexico, he was a teacher out there. He was like the pride and joy of the family because he had gone through school, graduated, became a teacher, and was also a teacher in folkloric dancing. He was just someone that we tried to be like, because he had done so much and he had done it almost all on his own, because my mother and father were all the time working. He was almost like a mother and father to the rest of my brothers and sisters. He actually took care of the rest of kids for about a year by himself.

"My mother had been on dialysis for like, five years, then she finally got a kidney transplant. After getting the kidney transplant, she had a heart attack. My being the small one of the family, I was the one helping out my mom, and most of the time it took away from boxing. I also lost track of what I was doing. I was young kid, I didn't have my head on right. I had lost a little bit of interest in boxing, I had gone away from it. I lost my sight. That's how I like to call it, I lost my sight. I was working odd jobs, some construction and stuff like that."...

David is a full-time fighter...he said, "I got married on June 14, 2003. We have a little boy. His name is David, but he's not a junior. He's got my dad's name as his middle name. My dad's name is Anselmo."...