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Shaw Remembers Corrales
By Steve Kim (May 9, 2007)

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Word spread quickly throughout the boxing community on Monday night that Diego Corrales had been killed in a motorcycle accident in Las Vegas. At age 29, the fan favorite would see his life come to an abrupt end, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Michelle, and five children.

“He was a special fighter," said his promoter Gary Shaw, who had represented Corrales since his release from prison in 2003. "'Mr. Excitement', he loved the fans, he wanted to fight for the fans. The fans knew one thing - when Diego Corrales went through those ropes, they were going to see a fight. They may not have known how it was going to end but they were going to see a fight. He was a fighter the same way he lived his life - with reckless abandon - and those types of fighters, they epitomize what a fighter should be. And if we had more of that, boxing would be in much better shape. He'll be sorely missed."

That 'reckless abandon' that Shaw speaks of led to him getting off the canvas twice to stop Jose Luis Castillo in their classic 2005 slugfest. Unlike many other boxers today, he was willing to take on all-comers at anytime, including Joshua Clottey this past April in what would be his final performance, an exciting, yet punishing, ten round loss in Springfield, Missouri.

"He felt he could fight anybody at anytime, any style," said Shaw - who was opposed to the Clottey fight - on Tuesday afternoon. "And that was the part of him that was reckless abandonment, that he wouldn't even follow the gameplan. He'd go in there and he'd just punch it out and he always told me, 'Don't worry about me getting knocked down. If I get knocked out, you'll have to take me out on my back. Otherwise, I'm getting up.'

"And y'know, last night when James Prince (Corrales' manager) was at the scene, Diego was laying there with the white sheet over him, his helmet was sticking out, and I said to James Prince, 'I know 'Chico', if he can get up, he'd be getting up.'"

Corrales was an individual to admire inside the ring. Perhaps nobody of this past era - save maybe an Arturo Gatti - gave more of his himself each and every time he got into the squared circle. But his friendly and soft-spoken nature also belied a dark and violent side to his past and present. He oftentimes spoke openly of past comrades that were slain. He burned more than a few bridges within the business of boxing, most recently Joe Goossen, who he had stiffed out of his training fee for the third bout with Joel Casamayor bout last October. His carousing was well-known and he served time early this century for slugging his ex-wife while she was pregnant.

'Reckless abandon' can go both ways.

And in recent times his financial and personal hardships were no secret in boxing circles.

"There was a time that Diego was in good shape and we were paying him millions of dollars and he was happy and he was happy with his management team, Antonio Leonard (his co-promoter) and myself," Shaw would tell Maxboxing.

But after his October loss to Casamayor, where his million dollar-plus purse was docked for failing to make weight, he was seemingly used as a chess piece by those wanting to hurt Shaw for whatever reason, as he was seemingly smuggled to Golden Boy Promotions after that fight by past associates.

"Jin Mosley got involved," says Shaw of Shane Mosley's wife. Shaw, for several years, had promoted Mosley and it's no secret of her dislike of the promoter. "She became his manager, so she said, and tried to break the contract and gave him $300,000 and then wanted the money back when I provided the contract. It just turned his head. He told me in Missouri that he felt a lot of pressure from them and he said to me at one point that they wanted to buy a house and move next door to him.

"Y'know, he didn't fight Oscar De La Hoya twice. He didn't have their money. And in the end all they cared about was getting their money back. And my understanding is that they were thinking about suing him. I know because Golden Boy, they sent me an attorney’s letter where they made 'Chico' sign that whatever his purse was, they would get the first $300,000. So if he fought for $300,000, he'd have to fight for free.

"So I think it put a lot of pressure on 'Chico'.

Exacerbating things were problems with the Internal Revenue Service.

"He had some back taxes and he started to clear them up," confirmed Shaw. "The IRS was there when he fought Casamayor and they took their money. So they were there for that. But they were not there for the Clottey fight and I don't know if he filed '06 taxes or not. But in '06, I had paid him well over $3 million. So hopefully he paid his taxes; if not, it's going to be burden on Michelle now."

By the time the Clottey fight had come around, Shaw says he and his boxer had patched their relationship up.

"When we were in Missouri it was back to the old, Antonio Leonard, James Prince, 'Chico' and Gary Shaw. The team was back," he said. "He even signed an extension on my agreement that I didn't tell anybody about and nobody knew about. But he did sign it. He was sitting next to me and it was like the old times because he looked over at me and goes, 'What's wrong with this picture? You're eating and I'm drinking water.' So we both laughed. It was back to the same thing and we started talking about bling and cars and watches and stuff like that.

"He was relaxed and he apologized to me. The one thing that he did do, he said he was sorry for what happened. He said, 'It was just pressure, pressure, pressure' and that we'd go forward. I said, 'Everything’s forgotten. Just go in the ring and do what you gotta do.'"

But unfortunately, he was never quite the same fighter he was prior to his first matchup with Castillo. Like many others who engage in such taxing contests, he left a piece of himself in the ring that was irretrievable. It ended up being his last professional victory.

And as he trudged back warily to his dressing quarters at the Springfield Mosque following his frightful beating at the hands of Clottey, where he would be looked over by the medical staff, he had the all-too-familiar look of a prizefighter who had given so much, but now had nothing left.

Couple that with his personal strife, perhaps at this point in life Corrales didn't care just how fast he was going on his motorcycle or just what he'd run into.

"I knew there was turmoil in his marital state, I know there was turmoil with the Goossen training situation, I know there were some financial problems, that the IRS may not have been paid for 2006. He took a beating in that fight. And we were talking about whether he should come back down to 140 or a catch-weight. All he did was tell me, 'Go make me another big fight.'"

Corrales' memorial service was originally scheduled to take place at 11 am at the Palm Green Valley Mortuary in Las Vegas on Thursday, a service which was arranged by Shaw and paid for by him, Leonard and Prince. Yet late Tuesday night, a press release was sent out, noting that the service was being postponed, with further details to come from the Corrales family.

Now, those who surrounded Corrales in life will try and help a widow move on into an uncertain future.

"I called Michelle today and she broke down and cried when she heard my voice," said Shaw. "I told her, as Diego was a fighter, she's got to be strong for the children. There's a lot of people depending on her. And she didn't know what to do."

Corrales lived fast, and unfortunately, he died that same way.