Navarette And Diaz Showed Respect Out Of Ring Late Saturday

It was a grueling battle that favored WBO Featherweight Champion Emanuel Navarette eventually won by TKO late Saturday night in Kissimmee, FL. But, Navarette knows his latest victim deserves credit too, and he made sure that Christopher Diaz heard it from him long after the ESPN cameras were off and the fans had left the Silver Spurs Arena.

Top Rank Boxing, who promoted the Navarette-Diaz 12 round main event, shared out this video of the two combatants, as they came together, “cervesas” in-hand, to go over what they had been through in the ring a little while earlier,

There was only one right way for Emanuel Navarrete and Pitufo Diaz to end the night:

Having a beer together in the hotel lobby. ? pic.twitter.com/yoeLlHJMyS

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) April 25, 2021

A great show of class from the rising star out of Mexico who improved to 34-1, 29 KOs overall and who is now 7-0 with 6 KO’s over the last 2 1/2 years in championship fights.

Our Marquis Johns was on hand in Kissimmee and gave some first person thoughts on the battle as it wore into the later rounds,

Once the eighth started, Diaz was sent down for the second time in the fight. He got up, but was immediately dropped again with a wicked body shot in the final moments of the round. It was at this point of the fight, where any hope for Diaz making a comeback made it’s way to the parking lot to beat traffic.

Navarrete, known as Vaquero (“Cowboy”), had a moment of concern, when he fell to close out the ninth round. It appeared he might have tweaked his left knee, which had a sleeve on it for protection.

From that point on, he wasn’t the same attacker which we saw earlier in the fight until the 12th. The championship rounds played out with a slower pace partly because of this, and Diaz unable to get anything going until the final round.

That final round saw Diaz knowing he was behind, press the issue to Navarette, who just didn’t have the same bounce earlier in the fight. Despite this last rush, Diaz was knocked down again in the final round from a barrage of Navarette punches and the referee and Diaz’s own corner had seen enough to halt the bout.

We now wait to see if Featherweight unification is in the cards for the rising Mexican star.

The WBA has two champs in veteran, Mexican multi-division champ, Leo Santa Cruz is their “Super” belt holder and China’s Xu Can is the “Regular” champ. Santa Cruz was kayoed by Gervonta Davis last October at 130 lb. and it’s probably unlikely that he will comeback to Featherweight. And, Can has travel issues that may keep him from being relevant in a fight in North America for the foreseeable future.

Britain’s Josh Warrington vacated the IBF version of the Featherweight title and then, got knocked out himself in a non-title fight in March. So, that belt could be in play for a Navarette unification fight, as well.