By Jason Kim: In arguably the best fight on the Miguel Cotto vs. Joshua Clottey card on Saturday night was the six round bout between undefeated up and coming super bantamweight prospect Jorge Diaz (9-0, 5 KOs) and Guadalupe De Leon (7-7, 2 KOs) which ended with Diaz winning by an exciting six round unanimous decision at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York.
The final judges’ scores were 58-54, 59-53 and 59-53. Diaz, 21, dropped De Leon two times in the first round, once from a big left hook to the head and the second time coming from a short right hand. Somehow, De Leon weathered the storm in the opening round and was able to make the rounds close with his excellent body punching.
While De Leon, 30, came into the fight having lost five out of his last seven bouts but fought much better than his record would have you believe. Diaz used his speed and a high work rate to control the first three rounds, staying in front of De Leon and working him over with combinations to the body and head.
When Diaz was letting his hands go, De Leon often would hold off on his shots. However, once Diaz would have any kind of lull in his punching, De Leon would come roaring to life and throw some of finesse looking body shots I’ve seen since Julio Cesar Chavez last fought.
De Leon’s body punching gave Diaz some problems, particularly in rounds four through six when De Leon began to apply much more pressure than he had in the early going. Both fighters stood toe to toe in the 4th round firing off huge shots. De Leon stalked Diaz around the ring, tagging him with big hooks to the body.
Diaz, though, stayed on the move showing great variety with his shots and being able to stop suddenly and fire off two and three punch combinations. It was difficult to predict which angle Diaz would throw his punches because sometimes he leap from long range to throw hooks and other times he come straight down the middleweight with right hands.
However, by the 4th round Diaz had lost much of the power on his shots and was landing with more slapping shots, whereas with De Leon, he was putting a ton of power into his body shots. The problem for De Leon was that Diaz constantly moved around and didn’t give him a fixed target to land his big body shots much of the time.
Diaz fired off a few flurries in the 4th, but most of the round belonged to De Leon, who stalked Diaz around the ring and landed a lot of hurtful body shots. Diaz outworked De Leon in the 5th round, throwing more shots but with much less power on them. De Leon appeared to hurt Diaz with a right hand to the body late in the round which caused Diaz to back away for a period of time and lower his guard to protect his ribs.
In the 6th round, De Leon came out fast firing off big body shots over and over again. Diaz looked gassed for the first two minutes of the round firing off few meaningful punches. However, in the last minute Diaz came to life and began throwing a ton of shots trying to make up for his bad start in the round.
De Leon seemed to hurt Diaz with a hard left to the body that caused Diaz to back off for a brief spell. Diaz came back but was throwing with almost zero power compared to the big body shots that De Leon was hitting him with. De Leon looked like the much fresher fighter in the end.
I was impressed with both of these fighters. De Leon may have a lot of losses on his record, but the guy has got some talent there. Diaz needs to work on his stamina because he looked gassed at the end.