Cristian Ricardo Lucio "El Diamante" Mijares

I wonder if Amsterdam would return to gloat if Mijares ended up capturing the WBC 130lb title.

"You see? I told you he was God! "

Just biding his time all these years...

 

2007 was a fun time to be following the sport..

De la Hoya (and Hatton) vs. Mayweather, Kessler vs. Calzaghe, B-Hop vs. Winky, the super middleweight season of The Contender (especially the Bika vs. Codrington finale @ TD Garden; I sat ringside!), Vázquez-Márquez I & II, Katsidis vs. Earl, Cotto vs. Judah, Povetkin vs. Byrd, Pavlik vs. Miranda (and Taylor I), Adamek vs. Dawson, and more...

Goddamn. Looking at that all, objectively, saying this isn't just nostalgia: boxing was a FUCK-TON better a decade ago than now. Whether you were looking for gobs of technical skill contained within four sets of ropes, or just pure whiteknuckle action, that list is top shelf (and overstuffed top shelf at that, like a teenage girl's)

 

Right?? He made his pro debut ten months after Mayweather's. (at the age of 15)

 

Mijares officially gains a square on the chessboard today with the publication of the September edition of the WBC rankings. He is now fourth, and the only four men ahead of him (champ Scorpion, challenger Matador, and #2 & #3 contenders Bandit & the Rat) are slated to meet each other in a championship and eliminator match respectively, meaning all Diamante has to do is sight right and when the dust settles he will be at minimum ranked 3rd (as each of those matches will produce a loser, who then will drop below him, and whosoever emerges the eliminator to challenge whomever the champ is, THAT fight will also have a loser, who also will drop...so he could become the mandatory #1 contender just through attrition!!!)

 

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Cristian's manager and uncle was a pro boxer himself, and did pretty well in his day.

In his biggest fights, he fought - and lost to - Jose Luis "El Zurdo" Ramírez (eventual 2x WBC lightweight champ), Puerto Rican legend Esteban de Jesús (between Durán I & II) in his only world title bout, and bone-crunching lefty Andy Ganigan (the original "Hawaiian Punch", three decades before Viloria - notably, Mijares Saldivar was among the very few opponents to go the distance with Ganigan)

On the initial march to contention before facing de Jesús, uncle Chente also had decent wins over previously unbeaten Randy Shields x2 (later two-time world title challenger, who beat Sugar Ray Leonard in the amateurs), Vilomar Fernández (crafty Dominican coming off a nice run of form, and who later beat Argüello!! Later gave a good accounting of himself versus Durán, nearly becoming the first to stretch him 15), and Tury Pineda (known then for having engaged in a brief yet brutal FOTY candidate with fellow teenager Danny "Little Red" López, and later for a pair of challenges of Guts Ishimatsu for the WBC title, drawing the first time and then losing a close UD15).

 

Vicente Mijares Saldivar vs. Arturo Pineda:

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You can see the germination of the style that would eventually be passed onto Cristian, who then refined it and executed it a little better. Much like Floyd Mayweather Jr. with his syncretism of his father's and uncle's styles.

 

So, random coincidence but yesterday a video I uploaded in May of 2008 received its first comment in 9½ years:

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I also had no idea that video was homing in on 5k views!

 

?

 

So, kind of silly but the only reason I originally synced up that Mijares vs. Muñoz footage with that Pantera song in that video is because Cristian to me has always borne a striking (pun intended) resemblance to a rattler, specifically a diamondback (which dovetails nicely with his ring moniker) and because Amsterdam had trolled half the board into a frenzy with the whole "Mijares is God" thing (which I actually coined) by then, and because with the "born again with snakes eyes" and "becoming god-size" lyrics, I considered a) myself clever and b) it just a cool tune, period...but it ended up going really surprisingly well together. I miss having access to high-end video editing software.

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Look at this scaly motherfucker!

 

I'm just as bad, if you get to know me.