Former International Boxing Federation lightweight champion Julio Diaz’s (34-4, 25 KOs) busy fighting style was no match for the hard-punching World Boxing Organization and World Boxing Association lightweight champion Juan Diaz (33-0, 17 KOs) who blasted him round after round with multiple combinations until Julio ultimately quit at the beginning of the 9th round on Saturday night at the Sears Centre, in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. With the win, the 24-year old Juan Diaz adds the IBF lightweight title to his collection of belts, clearly showing that he’s the dominant fighter in the lightweight division.
Before the bout, there was speculation that Julio’s high punch volume would cause problems for Juan, enough possibly for Julio to create an upset. However, after the first couple of rounds, Juan put that thought completely out of mind as he pummeled Julio with blistering three and four punch combinations to the head and body.
Though Julio continued to throw a massive amount of punches, he seemed to take a lot of power of his punches as he soon realized that he couldn’t match Juan for power. During the early going, Julio made the fatal mistake of standing square in front of Juan, a move which prevented Julio from defending himself properly, as it made him a bigger target for Juan’s huge shots.
In the fourth round, Julio began switching to southpaw, perhaps hopiong that this would confuse Juan. It didn’t. Instead, Juan began throwing sustained combinations, four to seven at a time, and giving Julio very little rest in between attacks. It seemed that Julio wouldn’t be able to take much of this unless Juan tired out soon, because Julio’s eyes were beginning to swell from the constant punishment.
In the seventh round, the only round that Julio appeared to win, Juan appeared to take most of the round off, allowing Julio to land a ton of unaswered shots. Even still, Juan came on in the last thirty seconds of the round and almost stole the round. In the 8th round, Julio continued to do most of the punching, hitting Juan with fast combinations – none of which had any effect on him, however. As the round was ending, Juan ripped off a devastating four-punch combination before the bell that had the crowd screaming. It was the type of combination that usually leads to a knockout or a knockdown, so I was expecting the fight to end in the next round. However, didn’t realize how quick it would be, because as soon as Julio walked out at the start of the 9th round, he immediately signalled to the referee Genaro Rodriguez that he’d had enough and didn’t want to continue. The bout was stopped offically at 0:01 pf the 9th round.
Afterwards, Juan called out super featherweight Manny Pacquiao, saying that he’d like to fight him next if they can come to an arrangement. However, that would seem likely at this point due to the fact that Pacquiao has been reluctant to move up in weight and would likely not want to be at a disadvantage, especially against a fighter that punches as hard as Juan Diaz.