Emanating in front of just
5,168 fans at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, this lightweight
unification bout aired May 7 2005, live on Showtime, and produced
more drama and fireworks than fans of any kind could've imagined.
Diego
Corrales walked slowly through an empty Mandalay Bay Events Center,
slapping his hand on the ring apron as he passed it. He walked toward
a chair and dropped into it.
He was doing an interview about his lightweight
unification fight with Jose Luis Castillo which would happen in five
days in that ring. Corrales knew it would be a brutal fight, but he
was willing to sacrifice everything to win it.
Many fighters say they'd
be willing to die in the ring; Corrales is one of the extremely few
who actually meant it. He'd fired his father as his trainer four years
earlier for stopping his fight with Floyd Mayweather after Mayweather
had knocked him down five times.
Corrales looked toward the ring and,
for a second, seemed to get lost, as if he could see the coming battle
unfolding. Then, he grinned devilishly and said to a reporter, "You
know, I'd walk through fhe fires of hell if I had to win this fight."
After
nine brutal rounds of two-way action, Corrales (39-2, 32 KOs) rallied
from a pair of knockdowns in Round 10 to miraculously stop Castillo
(52-6-1, 46 KOs) on his feet seconds later.
Nearly 15 years to the
week of this epic fight, Showtime will re-air the two-fight series
(Castillo won the rematch by TKO five months later) on Friday at 10
p.m. ET. In addition, the Showtime digital series "Morning Kombat"
will produce a live companion show on YouTube called "Classic Kombat."
CBS
Sports, with the help of Showtime, caught up this week with a handful
of those who were in the arena that night for an oral history of the
spectacular Round 10, including what led up to the legendary Joe Goossen
(trainer of Corrales): When Diego first came to me, we had just eaten
him with Joel Casamayor in October 2003. It was a big victory for
us. So when the whole thing came about that Diego and Casamayor were
going to have the March 2004 rematch, Casamayor was out of my gym
and we parted ways. Diego had gotten rid of his trainer. One of my
assistants called him and Diego said, 'Screw you' and hung up on him.
He thought it was a psychological game we were playing.
ARTIE PELULLO
(Banner Promotions president, held option on Corrales): I made a deal
with Gary Shaw to co-promote Corrales should he beat Acelino 'Popo'
Freitas in August 2004. But he needed the Freitas fight to get to
Castillo because Frietas had the WBO title. Acelino won the first
seven rounds before Corrales dropped him three times and in the 10th
round Freitas quit and had enough.
GOOSSEN: Once you got to know Corrales,
he was a great guy, but he was a very intimidating dude. When he walked
into my gym the first time, he looked at me like, 'I got something
to say to you.' I kind of smoothed out of the situation real quick
and we had a great run. We beat Casamayor to take the 130-pound title
back, then we moved up to the 135 and we stopped Freitas in 10. He
really trusted me at that point and when we developed that game plan,
he stuck with it. We implemented it, he executed it and the rest is
history.
PELULLO: Gary and I were friends and we made a deal for the
fight with Jose Luis Castillo. We thought it was going to be a good
fight but listen, nobody thought it was going to be what it turned
out to be Nobody.