Diaz back in Manny’s corner

MANILA, Philippines – Argentinian cutman Miguel Diaz will be back in Manny Pacquiao’s corner with Freddie Roach and Buboy Fernandez for the welterweight fight against Timothy Bradley at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday morning (Manila time).

Diaz, 78, worked against Pacquiao when he was in the corner of Oscar Larios in 2006, Erik Morales for the rubber match in 2006 and Jorge Solis in 2007. Pacquiao swept those assignments. In 2008, Diaz was invited by Roach to serve as Pacquiao’s cutman for the fight against Oscar de la Hoya. He’s since been a fixture in Pacquiao’s corner.

Diaz has been a trainer or cutman or both for over 40 champions in 45 years in the business. Among the fighters he’s worked with are De la Hoya, Pedro Decima, Fernando Vargas, Israel Vazquez, Jorge Arce, James Toney, Stevie Johnston, Floyd and Roger Mayweather, Freddie Norwood, Cesar Soto, Bones Adams, Kelly Pavlik, Miguel Cotto and Freddie Roach. For his work, Diaz has been dubbed “El Mago” or “The Magician.” His ability to treat cuts in between rounds is well-known in fight circles.

Diaz worked with Floyd Mayweather for his first 17 fights then they broke off when he decided to join Diego Corrales’ corner against Money in 2001. Diaz once described Mayweather’s uncle Roger as the most difficult fighter he’s ever trained. “Roger deprived himself of being one of the greatest fighters in the last 20 years,” said Diaz, quoted by Joe Santoliquito in KO Magazine. “When he was a fighter, he’d spend hours in the gym but he loves the night life, he loves the girls. If Roger would have taken care of himself outside the ring, no one could deny he could have been one of the best and we’re talking about the same time as Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran.”

Diaz’ father Miguel Sr. ran a boxing academy in Campana, about 150 miles from Buenos Aires in Argentina where he learned how to fight at the age of seven. Diaz compiled a record of 27-0, with 24 KOs, as an amateur. He turned pro but after one match, gave up boxing because his father was against it. Instead, Diaz turned to playing professional soccer in Argentina. In 1965, he moved to the US and started training fighters in Johnny Tocco’s gym eight years later. Diaz has now lived in Las Vegas for over 40 years and he’s been involved in about 300 world title fights.

To Diaz, discipline is the No. 1 character element of a fighter. “If a fighter has training habits that are very bad and he becomes a champion of the world, it won’t last,” he said. “He could have great ability but I always say, ‘Imagine if that fighter would have been disciplined and how good he could have been.”

Regarding women, Diaz said he likes his fighters to be married to the right partner. “She has to understand boxing because if a woman doesn’t, she becomes a pain in the ass,” he said. “The wife’s in a bad mood, the fighter is in a bad mood and I have to train him. The whole thing can get completely wacko. If a fighter is not married to the right woman, it could be worse than a fighter chasing girls in the street. People think boxing is a physical sport but it’s really mental. I say 80 percent is mental and 20 percent is physical.”

On abstaining from sex for six months to prepare for a fight, Diaz said it’s ridiculous. “I’m an old-timer but I accept the new ideas and I accept the new ways of training,” he said. “I don’t know how to do weights. I don’t know how to do stretching like the new trainers who have conditioning coaches and this and that. I believe in all of that but I only know one thing. All of that can’t help you if you’re not a fighter. Sex is not the point. The point is the chase, the night life. The point is going after the girls and not going to sleep when you have to run at 6 o’clock in the morning. I have fighters who were chasing broads during the night and the following day, they’ll run. They were burning the candle at both ends. For me, no sex for six months is totally out of the question. To me, it creates a lot of anxiety in the fighter.”

Diaz said he’s proud of Pacquiao and what he does for his country. He dismissed Pacquiao’s knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez as an accident. “It’s not like Manny took a beating and got knocked out,” he said. “He was winning the fight when Marquez got lucky. That’s how it is in boxing sometimes. You walk into a punch. Something like that, you learn from and you move forward.”