Who is David Diaz?

Employees at Time Warner Cable in San Antonio on Tuesday were lined up to get the autograph of a particular boxer. He faced television cameras and print reporters as well during his day in Texas.

Said boxer will be a guest at the Arizona Diamondbacks game against the Phillies tonight in Phoenix. And during the promotional tour for the biggest fight of his life, he will visit Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Introducing David Diaz, holder of one of the four lightweight world championship belts. Never heard of him? That’s OK. He is not exactly a household name, but he is the guy who is going to defend his title against Manny Pacquiao on June 28 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Pacquiao, a junior lightweight champion and one of the most popular fighters in the world, is moving up in weight.

With longtime publicist Bill Caplan of Top Rank Inc. at his side Tuesday, Diaz went on a get-acquainted trip to San Antonio that included several hours at Time Warner, the parent company of HBO, which will televise this card on its pay-per-view arm.

We then caught up with Caplan and Diaz as they sat at the airport awaiting their flight to Phoenix. Tonight at the baseball game, Diaz is scheduled to be a guest on the Diamondbacks’ Spanish-language radio broadcast. Caplan will then take him through the press box and have him shake hands with some of the baseball writers.

Caplan has been on this road 40-plus years. But it’s new to Diaz, whose biggest victory came Aug. 4 when he won the championship with a unanimous decision over Erik Morales in Rosemont, Ill., which is near Diaz’s hometown of Chicago.

A win over Morales sounds good to the ear, but in reality Morales was washed up and afterward he announced his retirement.

So, who is David Diaz? What would he want people to think about him in regards to his persona outside the ring?

“That I’m just a guy, a regular guy who you can come up to and have a conversation with and laugh and joke around,” Diaz said via telephone. “Easy going guy.”

Diaz grew up in the rough Humboldt Park section of Chicago. He was one of nine siblings, but the only one born in Chicago and not Mexico. One of his brothers passed away in 1998.
“It was hard for my parents to feed us because we came from such a big family,” Diaz said. “Since I was the last one, I was the baby. I had it pretty much easy. My brothers and sisters are the ones who went through the hard stuff so they could make it easier for me.
“We lived in a rough neighborhood. But did I experience the roughness? I had good parents and a good activities base that kept me away from that and boxing was one of them.”
Certainly, he said, he was not the perfect kid.

“I had my little trouble stints, but I guess I was always fearful of what my parents would say and that kept me in line,” he said. “They did a lot for me.”

The trouble he did find was the kind that introduced him to the wrath of his father.
“People say don’t hit your kids but I got whipped a few times and I turned out OK,” Diaz said, laughing.

Caplan referred to Diaz as a “late bloomer.” True enough. Diaz did not even get his first world championship shot until he took on Morales nine months ago at the age of 31; he’ll be 32 on June 7. (A year earlier he won the interim title in August 2006 with a 10th-round stoppage of Jose Armando Santa Cruz).

It didn’t help Diaz that he took a two-year hiatus from boxing from September 2000 to September 2002. After beating Zab Judah in the 1996 Olympic Trials Box-Offs, Diaz represented the U.S. in the ‘96 Olympics and he went 1-1.

He began his pro career in November 1996 and started 13-0 with five knockouts. But he was burned out and he quit.

“My training wasn’t as intense as when I was an amateur,” Diaz said. “I guess in the same sense, I needed a break as well. It was just a hassle even getting to the gym with me. It was like, ‘I have to go here again? Oh, man, I gotta do this workout.’

“I think I needed a break and I took that break and I think it served me well because when I came back to the gym I was pumped. Everyone saw the change in me.”

Diaz has gone 21-1-1 with 12 knockouts since his 2002 return, giving him an overall record of 34-1-1 with 17 knockouts. His one loss was to Kendell Holt via eighth-round technical knockout in February 2005.

But three years and four months after that setback, he will be defending his world championship belt against one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world in Pacquiao. Pacquiao is a national hero in his native Philippines, and he is adored everywhere else because of his ferocity and overall talent in the ring, and his engaging personality outside of it.

Diaz said he’s not scared. Not worried a bit about being on by far the biggest stage of his career, fighting Pacquiao in front of what is bound to be a very loud pro-Filipino crowd.
“No, not really,” he said. “I’m not at that point. This is all great and stuff but it’s something that a fighter should want, a fight of this magnitude. … It’s exciting and everything, but I try not to get too caught up in it because I have a job to do and that’s fight Manny Pacquiao.”
Diaz then introduced us to his sense of humor. He was asked if he had thought about what it’s going to be like the week of the fight. Would he have the proverbial butterflies?

“I don’t think I will,” he said. “I haven’t yet and I feel pretty calm. The only time I get nervous is going up the stairs to the ring. I’m just afraid I might slip and look like a fool on national TV. That’s the only time I get nervous.”