If my friend Diego Corrales returned from death today, I have no reason to believe he would shed a tear for his own passing in a motorcycle accident last Tuesday, May 8.
But only for the impact his death will have on his family, his beautiful and God-sent wife, Michelle, and his five children, whom Diego adored. So much so that when I went to Los Angeles in September 2005 to spend a week with him while he trained for his rematch with Jose Luis Castillo, a fight that excited boxing fans to the point of orgasm, I could not derail the daily topic of our conversation from his wife and kids back home in Las Vegas, and if he was anxious for the rematch with Castillo it was not because he wanted to pocket another paycheck or make history again or prove yet another time his supernatural ability to rise from off the canvas to triumph, as he did in the first Castillo fight, but rather, so that he could conclude training camp and get back to Las Vegas, where Michelle and the kids were waiting for him.
And whom he provided for. I remember once asking him why in the world he would get back in the ring with that formidable Mexican warrior Castillo, whose relentless forward style was so similar to Diego’s it was inevitable that Diego would absorb as much, if not more, punishment than he had during their first fight, a brutal and historic match a mere five months earlier. Without hesitation he told me the only good reason a man does something so crazy is family. “I’m fighting now,” he said, “so that my family won’t ever have to.”
He had grown up fighting for everything he got, and the fact that he turned himself into two-time world boxing champion with an education and a family is a testament to his fortitude, not only his resolve but his absolute refusal to ever give up.
Diego once told me that death was one of those things not in your control, and so there was no reason to worry about it, and every reason to pack as much life into right now as possible. I have every reason believe Diego was doing just that on the day he died. He was 29.
He lived, fought, loved and through it all never quit, on anything, and if there is a heaven for men of such character I’m confident he is there.