By Bart Barry-
Saturday on DAZN in a non-title match, the fighting pride of Tajikistan, undefeated super featherweight Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov, settled for a majority draw against California’s Joseph “Jo Jo” Diaz, a former Olympian and IBF titlist, in a California casino. The match was not spectacular but better than what its weighin portended.
This was to be a redemption thing of some sort for Diaz even before it had to be an even larger redemption thing for Diaz. It sure wasn’t either.
Long before Friday’s weighin debacle Diaz’s comportment raised questions about his willingness. Setting aside his skedaddling out the featherweight division without rematching reluctant Gary Russell, there was a contract and general understanding Diaz should give a rematch to Tevin Farmer, the man Diaz won his IBF super featherweight title from 13 months ago. Diaz, in no hurry to fight Farmer again and promoted by an adrift outfit now without its one revenue generator, allowed COVID-19 considerations to scuttle his rematch and assign an unknown Tajikistani in Farmer’s stead.
Then Diaz missed weight by so much weight he wasn’t allowed to try again. The culprit? A missing sauna at Fantasy Springs Casino. In his postfight interview Diaz used his generation’s version of postmodernist cant, beginning a torrent of excuses with the standard disclaimer: No excuses. There were the hometown haters trying to make money off his name, and childbirth, and a host venue so unprofessional as to tell Diaz to make weight by making his own sauna in his hotel room. There were Saturday’s judges, too, who mistook Diaz’s blocking everything thrown at him for landed punches.
Somewhere in this no-excuse-making mishmash, delightfully enough, the large gash to the outside of Diaz’s right eye, opened undoubtedly by a blocked punch, began spurting blood down the angering former titlist’s face. It wasn’t bleeding quite so steadily as Diaz’s nose had through much of the fight – another victim of a blocked punch.
Diaz’s outrage played authentic as his haircolor and promoter’s every utterance. Diaz long has felt like an Oscar knockoff. The rehearsed autobiography, the California roots, the Olympic dreams, the vanity. With about half the talent.
Saturday Diaz was easily the more talented fighter, still. Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov holds no secrets. With Freddie Roach in his corner, too, what secrets he once held are fewer. Coach Freddie wants his men to hurt the men across from them – “he’s not your friend”. Roach’s own condition, the product of other men once hurting him, lends a counterintuitive credence to his demands. If a conditioning coach unscathed by others’ fists implored his charges to hurt other men, it would sound bullying, weekend warrior-ish, silly, in its way, as that Vince Lombardi hologram a couple Sundays ago. That Roach’s neck is strained and his hands shake with Parkinson’s while he implores a fighter to hurt the man across from him says This is the only way, son, for if there were another way, wouldn’t I be the one to tell you?
That Roach says it doesn’t mean his charges take heed, necessarily, as Rakhimov didn’t in the later rounds Saturday, when either his conditioning failed or his affection for Jo Jo succeeded and Rakhimov relented right about the time the fight was there for his taking. A life-changing event for Rakhimov? No, not really. COVID-19 is a life-changing event. Winning a sliver of a title from Jo Jo during a pandemic is not.
Besides, if we’re going to concern ourselves with what was squandered Saturday, let’s go back to Jo Jo, where the squandering considerations begin and end. As everyone knows, Golden Boy Promotions is not in a very good place. Without Canelo Alvarez the company is a regional promoter with a flaky figurehead. The contract they have with DAZN, such as it is, relies primarily on DAZN’s current lack of meaningful fights and fighters. That should persist for some time, helping both parties overlook how little value Golden Boy Promotions brings a broadcaster without Canelo on its roster.
It would be an excellent time for Jo Jo to show his promoter and his promoter’s network he is the next Ryan Garcia. Instead Jo Jo comes to his first title defense woefully unprepared and goofy as hell in orange coif. Much more Son of the Legend than Niño de Oro. Does he get in the ring on a redemption quest, bin all self-preservation and ice an opponent we might later memorialize as “that tough Russian”? Nope. He tries for a quarter of each opening round then goes on defense and ekes out a draw, much to his father’s vocal dismay (and has anyone thought to coach trainers on how audible they’ve become to judges?).
Jo Jo can now give Tevin Farmer that rematch, if Farmer still wants it, or Jo Jo can go away.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
