By Jason Kim: Former IBF/WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KO’s) may not be ready to officially call it quits if he loses to WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) on Saturday night on Golden Boy Promotions mega card in Las Vegas, but it will be hard to see Diaz coming back from this. Regardless of how young the 26-year-old Diaz is there’s no getting around the fact that he has lost three out of his last five bouts and probably should have lost four of his last five bouts.

Another loss from Marquez would make it seem highly unlikely that the young Diaz could come back from this. To be sure, Diaz has been getting beaten by quality fighters and not just a bunch of scrubs. However, if Diaz can’t hang with the top level fighters, then he’s going to need to be very selective in the fights that he takes and will have to choose an alternative plan to try and pick up one of the many paper titles that are around.

Diaz possibly can get a paper title and he’s also young enough to wait out the 36-year-old Marquez, until he either moves out of the division permanently or retires. However, if Diaz can’t beat Marquez, he’s still got a lot of tough fighters in the lightweight division that can be more than a headache for him, such as Michael Katsidis, Humberto Soto, Miguel Vazquez, Antonio DeMarco, Joel Casamayor, Ali Funeka, Mike Alvarado, Paulus Moses, Kevin Mitchell, Urbano Antillon, Anthony and Peterson.

I think Diaz can beat some of those fighters, but I’m not even sure of that anymore. Diaz has looked really average in his last five fights and seems to go to pieces when he suffers a cut in his fights. Now that Diaz has scar tissue around both of his eyes, there’s a good chance he’s going to be cut again in his future fights. Diaz doesn’t hit hard enough to win his fights with early knockouts and usually has to go into the later rounds to either win by stoppages or decisions. It’s been three years since Diaz recorded his last stoppage victory and that was over Julio Diaz. It was good that Juan was able to stop him, but he hasn’t proven that he can take out the better fighters in the lightweight division.

Diaz has a college degree and would like to go to law school to become a lawyer in the future. If Diaz continues to take loses against the top fighters, he may need to seriously consider focusing on that goal rather than trying to become lightweight champion again.