I hope any of you shitting on Diaz for 'not trying to win' (which is bs) were talking the same **** when MAB employed pretty much the same exact gameplan against Pac in their second fight, the only thing is because hes mab it was somehow a smart performence. Diaz did come to win, he got a little gun shy in the middle rounds but a lot of that had to do with him trying to do what his trainer was telling him, after a tough round in which he exchanged with JMM, shields scolded him and told him not to trade with JMM, so Diaz went back to trying boxing and circling, and wow... of course hes not that great at that, because thats never been his style. He came out in the 12th and tried establishing himself against a JMM who was doing the same... and it made for a nice closing round in which the ref had to seperate them at the bell. Seriously, people need to relax... it was a decent fight and Diaz has nothing to be ashamed about.
I shook my head in disbelief when Diaz was saying earlier in the week he was'nt going to let his ego get in the way as it did the first fight........ There is a saying in baseball with pitchers, "if you're going to get beat with a pitch, dont get beat using your 2nd best pitch. Throw the hitter your best pitch. To put it in baseball terms, Diaz tonight was afraid to throw his best pitch. Btw, I'm not really dissing Diaz, but just telling it the way it is. The facts are that Diaz likely felt his best pitch was going to get knocked out of the park, and so I understand why he would try his hand at jabbing and trying ot move to the laterals.......but once he was past the mid point of the fight and was clearly down big in the fight......c'mon, go back and do what you do best and push the fight by swarming Marquez. To be honest, as a boxing fan I was more dissapointed with the instructions to Diaz by his trainer Ronnie Shields. Before the last round, Shields is actually telling Diaz something to the effect of not getting careless and to continue to work his way with the jab.....atsch Your fighter needs a knockout and you're telling him not to get careless?????? The job of a trainer is to instruct and in times when your fighter clearly needs a knockout, try to light a spark under him. Shields it was clear to me was more of an a survival mode than his actual fighter.
I'm one that is being consistent here, I did criticize MAB for his survival fight against Pacquiao. In fact, Diaz' performance against JMM would seem like he went all out in comparison.
Diaz tried to box with Marquez for most of the fight. It wasn't a smart gameplan to begin with, but he wanted to try something different after getting stopped in their last encounter. He fought hard within that gameplan, then tried to change it in the last two rounds going more back to his swarmer style to try and generate a KO. It didn't happen, but it was a solid effort from Diaz. He can probably beat everyone else in the division but Marquez is just too much for him.
Bang on the money Divac, I can't believe how easily led most of the fans are by the commentary teams. Diaz was fighting scared for the most part and did not come to win but to survive.
Diaz didn't come to win though Kirk, trying to fight on the backfoot and outbox a master boxer, its like Hatton trying to fight on the backfoot and outbox Mayweather if they had a rematch, never going to happen, but he may survive. Actually pressuring Marquez was the best tactic and it had a fair amount of success, many had him up on the cards early on. If he kept it up maybe he does better, I still can't see him winning but at least he will try. This time I don't think I gave him 1 round The telling thing was when he said before the fight 'if I lose this boxing match my career in boxing is finnished, but it won't finnish me as man I still have a career in law'. He was contemplating and accepting defeat right then when he said that
I guess I will never find out how would Diaz do at 130lbs. I honestly think he could easily make the 130lbs limit
Good post Divac and i can see where your coming from for sure. :goodI do think a lot of what happened was Shields doing as it was obvious that Diaz was trying to listen to him because there were a few times he would trade with JMM and then get told to quit doing that by his trainer. Obviously though it is in the fighters hands ultimately, but while people may have some points to critic.... i for one am going to focus on the positives for him especially if this is his last fight, and for me i saw plenty of good things from him as well. Hope he can leave boxing behind him and have a succesfull life outside the ropes.
Hes human bro. Hes not one of these forged in fire warriors who would rather die then lose and can seemingly fight anybody and believe they will prevail (fernando vargas).... hes a guy coming off some pretty devistating losses and some bad performences, and was wobbled by Malignaggi in his last fight, im not going to **** on him for having his doubts and trying to change something up (especially when he was probably being instructed to do so by his trainer) I do see your point though man... but i cut Diaz a lot of slack, he looked like a finished fighter and he got thrown in once again with one of the best fighters on the planet, and people always complain when fighters trip over the same rock twice, if Diaz would have been the typical baby bull in there and went right at JMM, and gotten knocked out sooner this time, people would be calling him a stupid fighter with no gameplan and blah blah, but he studied their first fight, and tried using a different tactic, yes i would have liked to see him throw it out around the 6th or 7th when you could see he needed to amp it up. And at the end of the day, they probably were on some level fighting to show that they could go the distance with JMM.... and while i completely understand why people would hate that, and i normally would too, im giving Diaz a pass, and if this is his last fight im just happy hes given us many thrilling fights in the past.
I like Diaz too. I think he's got a good head on his shoulders. I hope he takes a good rest and then gives it another go at 135 lbs against fighters besides JMM. Malignaggi was a bad style matchup for him. He just does'nt have the footspeed to chase, but I thought he still gave a good enough account of himself against Malignaggi even with the style issue. Btw, I hear that this morning Juan Diaz expressed some regret for not swarming Marquez more. .....and he gave a good enough and believable explanation as to why he was stuck in boxing mode. He said that when you train to fight in a certain mode, its not easy to just change it up and fight in a different mode.