The highly anticipated Diego Corrales/Joel Casamayor III showdown for the former’s WBC lightweight title turned out to be a near disaster for the defending champion. After Casamayor had stopped his rival on cuts in the first one, and Corrales had won the return by decision, expectations were high that the rubber match between these two bitter foes would be the most dramatic yet.

Casamayor, cocky and verbally aggressive, is a master of the trash talk that so many fighters indulge in both to psyche themselves up and intimidate their opponents. Corrales, a killer in the ring with 33 knockouts in 43 fights, is known for his low-key, sportsmanlike behaviour outside the ropes. But this time, Casamayor’s verbal barbs had pierced his skin, and he was more emotional than usual in pre-fight interviews.

Objecting to the Cuban’s put-downs, he sounded out of character in promising to punish his tormentor, indeed end his career.

Brave words. But, as Corrales’ week of hell would reveal, his battle was not so much with the challenger, but with himself, specifically with his struggle to shed enough weight on his 5ft 11in frame to get down to the demanding 135lbs he would have to make on the Nevada State Athletic scale the day before the fight.

With a walking-around weight of 150, Corrales had come down to 142 on arrival in Las Vegas from his two-month training camp in Los Angeles early in the week ahead of his Saturday showdown with Casamayor. That was the weight from which he had somehow squeezed down to 135 at the weigh-ins for the two ferocious battles with the formidable Mexican ex-WBC lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo.

I had watched him endure four days in a gym heated to 140 degrees, sweating through four layers of clothes in gritty workouts that could make strong men faint, if not breathe their last. But somehow, at the moment of truth, there he was, on the commission scale at 135 un punto, his slender but hard punching arms raised in triumph.

And there was Castillo, an ignominious 139, who, it was revealed, had had no intention of making the weight, hoping to pull a fast one with his trainer playing footsie with his own toe surreptitiously under the scale. Castillo’s perp was caught and fined, in a scandal I called “weight-gate”. Now it was Corrales’ turn to face the cruel music of overabundant avoirdupois.

For four days he eschewed food and water. Meanwhile, he drove himself to three two-hour sessions a day in that overheated gym. “If Chico [his nickname] was an accused terrorist, I’d be charged with defying the Geneva Convention,” his articulate trainer Joe Goosen quipped on the eve of the weigh-in “What a week! Look at me. When was the last time you saw me with stubble on my face? I haven’t shaved in three days. This has never happened to me before.”

In Goosen’s long and eminent career, he had never brought a fighter to the scales and not made the championship weight. But alas there is always a first time. At the age of 29, the body of the champion was finally saying, “No mas”.

On the day of the weigh-in, Corrales was suffering serious physical symptoms, hot-and-cold flushes and dizziness. A doctor was called to the elegant suite at the Mandalay Bay, where he seriously considered sending Corrales to the hospital and calling off the fight.

But Corrales is a proud man who truly loves his cruel sport and he insisted he had to go through with it. The fans would be disappointed. And of course there was that little matter of a purse of $1.2 million. Diego hadn’t fought in a year, he has a bunch of kids, including the new seventh-month-old little beauty Daylia, who he loves to carry with him, even in the gym. In his suite, through all this tribulation, he’d be holding the baby.

By crunch time Friday afternoon, disaster was in the air. Casamayor weighs in at 135. Perfecto. And Corrales? 139! Pandemonium. TV cameras grind and reporters break out their notebooks. The champ is given two hours to shed the four pounds, a physical impossibility.

Corrales works at it desperately – sauna, running, the works. But for the first time since he won the title from the then-undefeated Acelino Freitas two years ago, Corrales was discovering to his sorrow he was no longer a lightweight.

The fight would go on, but Corrales would be stripped of his cherished belts, and fined $250,000 by the Nevada Commission, with another $100,000 to be forfeited directly to Casamayor.

When the bell finally rang for round one, it seemed almost an anti-climax to the weight-defying drama of the week. At his best a 16-cylinder Cadillac in action, Corrales was barely drawing on half that. In the early rounds it seemed as if only the pale ghost of Corrales was in that ring, as his customary zeal for combat was painfully absent, and the clever southpaw Casamayor was able to dominate the early rounds.

In the fifth, there was a taste of Corrales’ power as he dropped Casamayor for a short count. But there was no follow-up from the now-former champ. After those four sacrificial days and nights, Corrales’ fight had been left back in the sauna and the overheated gym.

Somehow Corrales found the strength to make it close, and one of the three judges even had him winning, but the other two had it for the new lightweight champion. Still, Corrales and his corner thought he won. And at least he was fortunate to come out of it unscathed. Steve Farwood, the knowledgeable TV commentator, had voiced the fear that he might suffer serious damage.

At dinner after the anti-climactic affair, the Sacramento Kid was able to hide his disappointment and look to his future. He’ll be moving up to welterweight now. That’s where our No 1 pound-for-pounder, undefeated Floyd Mayweather, is preparing to face the conqueror of Zab Judah, the Argentine veteran Carlos Baldomir.

It’s a strong division that includes undefeated Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto, and the formidable WBO champion, the terror of Tijuana, Antonio Margarito, with his eight successful title defences.

At the post-fight dinner it was suggested that as Diego moves up to the new weight class where he now belongs, he should have a couple of tune-up bouts with with trial-horse welterweights before tackling the division’s superstars. But the undaunted Coralles is as fearless as Muhammad Ali was. “Why should I wait?” he asked. “I want Margarito first.” Margarito is a fighter the best have been avoiding. Give Corrales an F for failing for the first time to make the lightweight limit, but an A in his effort to pay his dues in a sport he’s determined to dignify.

Adding insult to injury, on the eve of this disputatious event, Corrales’s expensive Escalade was stolen from the Mandalay parking lot. Next morning, when he should have been home in the outskirts of Las Vegas, he was down at the police station trying to track the car.

In the finale song of the Broadway musical “What Makes Sammy Run?”, the anti-hero Sammy Glick sings, “Some Days Everything Goes Wrong.” To his credit, the indomitable Corrales refuses to sing that song. Heading into his 30th year, he’s determined to move up and leave his mark on those worthy welterweights.

Meanwhile the trashy, boasty, feisty escapee from Castro’s Cuba, Casamayor, the former Olympic gold medalist, readies himself for a born-again career as the new lightweight champion of the world.

The heavyweight division may be a Slavic mess, but it looks like an exciting year for the little guys.

And This Just In From The What’s New Department ...

After the fight, Corrales’s promoter Gary Shaw announced that in the future he will be promoting Casamayor. Par for the cynical course. How many times have I seen the brave promoters step over the body of their fallen charges to embrace and sign the winner? No wonder all the promoters die seriously rich, while too many champions die painfully poor.