By Matt Stein: Juan Manuel Marquez (49-4-1, 36 KOs) and Juan Diaz (34-1, 17 KOs) will fight for the vacant WBA & WBO lightweight titles in a scheduled 12-round bout on February 28th at the Toyota Center, Houston, Texas. The title opened up in the past week after former WBA/WBO lightweight champion Nate Campbell came in three pounds over the 135 pound weight limit for his fight against Ali Funeka.
The bout was allowed to go ahead but Campbell had his titles stripped from him, including the WBO title. This opens it up for Diaz and Marquez to fight it out for the belt. Briefly, it was thought that Amir Khan and Marco Antonio Barrera would fight it out for the WBO belt, but the WBO organization was having none of it and ruled that Diaz, ranked #3, and Marquez, ranked #2 in the WBO, should be the ones that fight for the title.
The 25-year-old Diaz recently defeated Michael Katsidis by a 12-round unanimous decision in September. Diaz fought very well, preventing Katsidis from landing his huge shots that he typically does. Part of the problem was that Diaz’s steady work rate put Katsidis on the defensive, keeping him too busy to get his offense in gear. By the time that Diaz slowed down a little in the later rounds, Katsidis had been hit far too much and had little left.
Diaz didn’t look like himself in his fight with Nate Campbell in March 2008. After suffering a cut above his left eye at the midpoint of the fight, Diaz looked like he didn’t want to be there and fought weakly for the rest of the way. In losing the fight, Diaz lost his WBA and WBO lightweight titles to Campbell. It would be nice for Diaz to at least capture one of the titles back, although he would much prefer to have fought Campbell for the titles to avenge his defeat to him.
Marquez defeated Joel Casamayor in September, stopping him in the 11th round in an exciting fight. Marquez showed great accuracy with his punches and showed good power after having moved up from super featherweight to take the fight.
10 years separates Diaz and Marquez, but both fighters come into this fight pretty evenly matched. Marquez is one of those fighters that have aged incredibly well, and is fighting more like a fighter in his early 20s rather than someone approaching forty. Diaz will no doubt try to outwork Marquez on the inside and hope to be able to use his youth and energy to wear Marquez down.
However, Marquez mostly fights on the outside and is more of a technician and probably won’t get lured into a firefight at close range with Diaz like some of his other victims have. Marquez will probably have too many skills for Diaz and will pound out a decision victory, or possibly a stoppage win on a cut. The winner faces the winner of Khan vs. Barrera.
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