By Allan Fox: For the past couple of days rumors have been floating around on the internet boxing sites about the 68-yearold legendary trainer Emanuel Steward having passed away in a Chicago hospital from an undisclosed illness. However, that rumor was shot down by his sister Diane Steward-Jones, who said to the Detroit Free Press “Emanuel is still with us. He hasn’t left the room. There is no shade over his head.”

According to USA Today, Steward is taking both traditional medicine for the pain and a “Palm healing or hands on healing alternative medicine procedure.”

According to reports, Steward is suffering from diverticulitis which has required surgery. While it’s usually not a fatal disease there can be complications that can be quite serious, such as Peritonitis.

There have been rumors floating around that Steward has colon cancer, but according to his sister maintains that it’s diverticulitis he’s suffering from. Of course, if Steward were really suffering from colon cancer than there would be a lot of reasons to worry as this is a disease that is quite serious. At any rate having surgery at Steward’s age isn’t a walk in the park and it’s understandable why there’s worry.

It’s odd how the rumors of Steward’s death have circulated around. I guess in the absence of information some boxing fans tend to have the herd mentality where they follow one inaccurate source of information as if it were fact instead of just rumor.

Steward has trained a number of famous fighters during his life, most notably Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, Miguel Cotto and Thomas Hearns. He’s still training Wladimir, but is unable to work with him for his upcoming fight against unbeaten Mariusz Wach from Poland.

Rafael Marquez vs. Cristian Mijares on Saturday night

This Saturday night former two division world champion Rafael Marquez (41-7, 37 KO’s) will be fighting former IBF/WBA/WBC super bantamweight champion Cristian Mijares (46-6-2, 21 KO’s) in a fight for the vacant vacant WBC Silver super bantamweight title at the Arena Cuidad de Mexico, in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

The 31-year-old Mijares appears to be fighting on a higher level right now compared to the 37-year-old Marquez, who clearly was the better fighter than Mijares in his prime but had deteriorated a lot due to advancing age. Mijares has won his last 10 fights and turned his career around after losing three straight fights between 2008 and 2009.

Whether Mijares has actually improved is debatable though. He’s not faced anyone as dangerous as the guys he was beaten by in 2008 and 2009 in losses to Vic Darchinyan and Nehomar Cermeno. There’s no question that if you put Mijares back in with Darchinyan at this point that Mijares would lose to Darchinyan once again, and perhaps even worse than he did the last time because Mijares has really slowed down in the past three years. He’s more of a stationary fighter that gets hit a lot compared to before.

Mijares had the nerve to say to Suljos.com “Marquez’s age counts against him. He’s losing his skills, as happens to all boxers with the years.”

That’s like the pot calling the kettle black. Mijares is losing his skills just the same except that he hasn’t been in with the guys that Marquez has recently lost to in Juan Manuel Lopez and Toshiaki Nishioka. Both of those guys would make easy work of Mijares without a doubt.