By Manuel Perez: In a fight that probably should have been stopped two rounds earlier, welterweight prospect Delvin Rodriguez (23-2-1, 14 KOs) stopped Oscar Diaz (26-3, 12 KOs) in the 11th round, when Diaz suddenly became unresponsive in between the 10th and 11th rounds, then stood up, staggered and collapsed on Wednesday night at the Municipal Auditorium, in San Antonio, Texas. Immediately, a medical team was rushed into the ring and oxygen was given to Diaz. Shortly thereafter, Diaz was taken out of the ring on a stretcher. Reportedly, he was taken to a hospital where surgery was performed to reduce swelling from a subdural hematoma, according to USA Today. At the present time, Diaz is said to still be in critical condition, in a medically induced coma.
Aside from the 4th round in which Diaz hurt Rodriguez with a big right hand, the fight was one-sided with Rodriguez dominating it with his powerful shots to the head. Diaz began to experience bad swelling under his right eye in the 7th and by the 9th round, his eye began swelling completely shut. He was no longer fighting competitively by this stage in the fight, taking terrible punishment by Rodriguez and only rarely landing any significant shots. I thought the fight perhaps should have been stopped as early as the 7th round, when it became clear – at least to me – that Diaz wasn’t going to be able to score a knockout over the hard-punching Rodriguez.
However, the bout continued, with Diaz taking more and more punishment. I suppose there was still a chance, a small one, that Diaz might be able to still score a knockout given Rodriguez’s recent 8th round stoppage to Jesse Feliciano in March 2007. I still thought the chance remote, if not impossible, because Diaz’s eye was in bad shape effecting his ability to see and he had taken a tremendous amount of punishment from Rodriguez already.
From the 1st round on, the fight had mismatch written all over it, as Rodriguez was just too powerful for Diaz, and was hitting him with huge shots repeatedly to the head. Diaz would answer back, but he was much less successful at landing than Rodriguez. I saw it as Diaz landing one punch for every four to five of Rodriguez. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Rodriguez was a lighter puncher, instead of being the opposite of that. The second round was somewhat close, with Diaz coming close to matching Rodriguez’s punch output, but as close as Diaz came to throwing as many shots, he couldn’t match Rodriguez in the power department.
That seemed to be a big problem for him, for not only was his work rate less than Rodriguez, but his power was considerably less. Diaz began to show signs of swelling under his right eye in the 3rd round, and it looked then that it would soon be a big problem for him. As it turns out, that’s exactly what would happen in the later rounds. Diaz landed several good shots in the 3rd, but nothing in comparison to the heavy shots that he was forced to absorb.
In Diaz’s best round of the fight, the 4th, Diaz tagged Rodriguez with a powerful right hand, staggering Rodriguez badly and causing him to back up. Rodriguez would continue to stagger around the ring for the next 15 seconds. However, Diaz was unable to finish Rodriguez off. A better welterweight would no doubt have stopped Rodriguez at this point, because he was there for the taking and in bad shape. Diaz, though, didn’t let his hands go after he hurt Rodriguez, and wasted the opportunity by following him around and looking for an opening instead of letting his hands go. It appeared that all Diaz needed to do was land a left hook and the job would have been finished, but Diaz seemed frozen in the moment when he needed to be at his best.
Rodriguez retook control of the fight in the 5th round, once again tagging Diaz with powerful right hands and left hooks to the body. Rodriguez caught Diaz often during the round while backing up, and hitting Diaz as he was come wading in to try and land shots of his own. This was repeated often in the second half of the round.
Diaz had a better round in the 6th, landing almost as often as Rodriguez, but like in most of the previous rounds, Diaz’s shots weren’t nearly as hard in comparison. In the 7th round, the fight began to really get one-sided, as Diaz’s punch output seemed to drop off dramatically. At the same time, his right eye started swelling worse, hinting that it would be swelling completely shut soon. In rounds eight and nine, Rodriguez pounded away at Diaz without let up, hitting him with powerful shots during the duration of both rounds.
Rodriguez wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down with his own punch out, nor was his power lessening. By the 9th, Diaz’ right eye was open just a slit for him to see. He now was getting hit cleanly, because he was fighting essentially with only one good eye to see the incoming shots. In the 10th round, Diaz only landed a handful of punches, as he now looked both beaten and tired.
The two fighters fell heavily to the floor near the end of the round when they attempted to clinch. Though Diaz threw a couple of punches afterwards, he appeared to have nothing on them. In between the 10th and 11th rounds, Diaz was unresponsive to questions from his corner and the referee. He suddenly stood up, and collapsed into the ropes as the referee was trying to talk to him. Moments later, he was laid down on the canvas and a medical team and stretcher was brought into the ring to usher him away.