What was scheduled to be a question and answer session between myself, asking things that you great fans had e-mailed me, and WBA lightweight titlist Juan Diaz, ended up being an update on his injury that happened on Saturday. The injury resulted in the cancellation of his scheduled title defense against Ebo Elder that was to be televised on the ESPN pay-per-view card set for this Saturday, April 23, 2005. Although Diaz admitted to being disappointed, he was in good spirits. “You know, I can’t believe it happened this late in training with the fight only one week away. That (Saturday) was the last day of hard training. It was the last day of sparring and I was doing great. My sparring partner threw an uppercut, which I slipped, but his glove caught my headgear and moved it, with the tail end of the glove opening a gash on my left eyelid. As soon as it happened, I started feeling the blood pouring down my face. I wanted to go to the doctor fast and get it fixed because I still wanted to fight, but was told that I would not be able to fight. The doctor actually used like super glue to close the cut. He also had to use stitches to close the ends. See this goes to what I told you last time about how school is important because you just never know what can happen. I’m going to be out for about three to five weeks. My management told me that I will hopefully be fighting in late May, but more realistically, in July. I might fight Ebo or it might be the IBF champion, whoever it is at that time. I hope the fans are patient with me and continue to support me. Thanks for everything.”
No Juan, thank you for being so gracious with your time.
Sergio Martinez can be reached at srg_mrtnz@yahoo.com