Castillo Victory Must End The Day Before Weigh-in!

09.10.05 – Photo:Tom Casino/SHOWTIME – By Ronan Keenan: Jose Luis Castillo has finally finished the debate on the day before/same day weigh-in saga. His four round knockout of Diego Corrales will be remembered as the fight that ended the credibility for the day-before weigh-in. In a move that reeked of cheating, the Mexican abused the weigh-in protocol in an effort to gain an advantage over his former conqueror Corrales.

Over two years ago, after he was defeated by Floyd Mayweather in December 2002, Castillo stated that he would not fight at 135lbs again ,as the struggle to make the weight was overly weakening his body. However, the lure of big money fights and a world title opportunity persuaded Castillo to remain a lightweight- until yesterday.

The former champion obviously realized some time ago in his preparation for the Corrales rematch that he would be unable to squeeze his frame into the 135lb limit. Therefore the Castillo camp decided that they would abuse the weigh-in system, thus gaining a huge gain over their opponent.

It is clear that Castillo never even seriously attempted to make the lightweight limit on the Friday weigh-in. Initially he weighed in at 137lbs, which is an extraordinarily high level above the limit for a lightweight. Then 70 minutes later when he came back he was 138.5lbs! It is unheard of for such a highly regarded fighter to come in so high above the limit
in a world title bout.

Subsequently when Castillo’s corner-man was caught trying to manipulate the scales with his foot during the weight-in it was obvious that the Mexican’s team were trying to cheat their way to victory. Castillo was almost certainly never 137lbs, because the corner-man was more than likely influencing the scales during the initial weigh-in too.

Some observers initially believed that Corrales would gain an advantage from Castillo’s weigh-in drama. They thought that the challenger was genuinely struggling to boil down to the 135lb limit. However, in reality Castillo probably never even bothered to strain his body anywhere near the lightweight mark.

Instead, Castillo’s team knew that if their man came in at this high weight it would not jeopardize the fight taking place, due to the fact that it was such a big event and there was so much money at stake for everyone.

Castillo was fined $120,000, but this isn’t much considering that he was reportedly earning a purse of $1,200,000. And the real evidence that Castillo did not attempt to struggle towards the weight limit was when he bet $100,000 that he would knock his opponent out with Corrales’s promoter Gary Shaw yesterday afternoon. This indicated how confident he was that he
would be stronger than Corrales, thanks wholly to his mistreatment of the rules.

While Castillo was comfortably walking around miles above the weight limit, Corrales was sticking to the rules and straining his 6’ frame down to 135lbs. When the contracts were signed months ago, Corrales believed that Castillo would be in a similar position to himself in terms of weight-making, but he did not consider that his opponent would be brazen enough to blatantly ignore the weight limit.

After Castillo’s weight-making difficulties on Friday the respective promoters agreed that Castillo must not weigh more than 147lbs on the day of the fight. This move still did Corrales no favors, because Castillo would not have had to inconvenience himself too much to come in at this limit a full 5 hours before the fight. On the other hand, Corrales would still be recuperating from making 135lbs the day before.

On fight night it was evident that Castillo had a significant advantage by the shape of his body. His neck, torso and waist looked so much thicker than in the initial fight in May. Overall, the challenger appeared to be altogether more muscular than he was for the previous contest.

This was indicative of how the fight itself would turn out. From the onset Castillo was much stronger than Corrales and his punches seemed to be so much more powerful and damaging than his opponents. This was surprising, considering that both fighters had traded blows for ten rounds last May, when neither seemed to have a clear advantage in punching power.

The fresher Castillo was able to use his newfound (and immorally found) advantage in strength to stagger Corrales in the third and then unleash a thunderous left hook in the fourth to send the champion to the canvas for the ten count.

On paper Castillo’s triumph will look impressive, but overall it must go down as being one of the most tainted victories in years. It will never be known how much the weight-making influenced the fight, but this situation would never have arisen if there was just one official weigh-in on the day of the contest.

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