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Hall of Famer Diego Corrales’ children carry on a proud legacy

Hall of Famer Diego Corrales’ children carry on a proud legacy
BOXING

Hall of Famer Diego Corrales’ children carry on a proud legacy

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Diego Jr. and Daylia Corrales (Photo courtesy of the Corrales family)

by Joseph Santoliquito | 

It felt so authentic that Diego Corrales Jr. could swear he heard a voice coming from an ambiguous shape, telling him how he should bounce up on his toes and work his jab on the garage heavy bag. Diego Jr. turned away while squinting, trying to see who it was in the haze dispensing advice. 

“Who is talking to me?”

That is when Diego Jr. woke up in a cold sweat from an afternoon nap a year ago after he just started boxing.

“I remember I could not see anything, no features at all, I just knew that was a dream about my dad, showing me how to jab, how I should move, and I don’t know why this figure talking to me knew I was flat footed,” Diego Jr. said. “I am a religious person, and I would wonder what my dad was thinking. It was weird. I just knew it was dad. It was special because I never knew my dad. There was never a deep personal connection with my dad until I had that dream. It felt different.

“It felt like it was him.”

Diego Corrales Jr. was in the womb on May 7, 2007, the day his father, Diego “Chico” Corrales, died in a tragic motorcycle accident. As Diego Jr. got older, he learned what his biological father did for a living and that he was a ring warrior. But he just wanted to feel his father in his heart.

Diego Jr., 16, and his older sister, Daylia, 18, are Chico’s two children with Michelle Corrales-Lewis. Daylia was just over a year old when her dad died. Months after his death, she refused to go to sleep unless she slept on her father’s picture. 

Both Corrales children will be making the acceptance speech for their father on Sunday, June 9, when Chico is inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with fellow fighters Ricky Hatton, Michael Moorer and Ivan Calderon.

But it is Diego Jr. who is carrying his father’s legacy a step further. From August 8-10, he is going to embark on his own boxing career with his amateur debut at the first annual Diego “Chico” Corrales Classic at The Orleans hotel in Las Vegas.

Diego Jr. did not really delve into who his father was until he was around 11. The family basement contains his father’s title belts encased in glass. Diego Jr. would marvel at them, though he did not completely comprehend what they meant.

He says he is fortunate that he has two dads, the one he knows, Ryan Lewis, who married Michelle after Chico’s death, and the one he hears and reads about.

“My mom would tell me when I was younger that I have the blood of a warrior in me, and I never really understood what she was talking about until third grade,” Diego Jr. said.

That came to fruition when Diego Jr. got into a fight with a fifth grader who was considerably larger. The kid constantly harassed Diego Jr. in the playground. He made the mistake one day of pushing Diego Jr., who remembers turning around, swinging and knocking down the kid. Banished to the principal’s office awaiting his parents, he tensed up, gripping the chair arms, thinking he was going to catch hell from his mother.

“I remember my mom saying, ‘That’s it, you know you have that in you,’” Diego Jr. said, laughing. “That same kid always bugged me for no reason. Another time happened when I was in fifth grade. We were the same age, and I was this short, chubby kid. One day I was in the lunch line and this kid walked right in front of me. I did the same thing to him. He pushed me, and I pushed him back into the food trays. He stood up and I threw a punch. I hit him in the jaw and knocked him down.”

Again, Diego Jr.’s parents were called. Lewis arrived at the principal’s office greeted by Diego Jr. crying once again, thinking he was in trouble. Sitting in the office was the other kid. After seeing the size of the other kid, Lewis reacted the same way Michelle did a few years earlier, “That’s it?”

“After that, I looked up who my dad was, and I started reading about my dad, really trying to understand who he was and what he did,” Diego Jr. said. “I would see the belts in the basement. It was strange because everything I learned about my dad came from outside. This reminds me of an interesting story. An Uber driver picked me up one morning to go to the gym. The driver asked me what I did. I told him, ‘I box.’ He asked me what got me into boxing. I told him my family does it. He asked me my name. I told him, ‘Diego, Diego Corrales.’”

The Uber driver’s eyes welled up. Here, he had a history with Chico. They once met at a Waffle House, and he regaled Diego Jr. about how nice his father treated him.

A few years ago, Diego Jr. admits, he was going down a dark hole. He was skipping school and constantly testing Michelle. He was sleeping in class. He was nonresponsive to any discipline. He was gravitating towards a bad crowd. Michelle threatened to kick him out of the house. She took him out of school. He would stay in his room doing nothing. Finally, Michelle called a family friend, and not just any family friend, former heavyweight world champion Hasim Rahman.

Rahman knew Diego Jr. since he was a baby. But Michelle wanted Diego Jr. to do something productive with himself. Rahman pulled up, his car came screeching at the front of the house.

“Rah heard I was messing up in school and he is one scary man when he is mad,” Diego Jr. recalled. “There was no sweet talk. He got out of the car and told me off right in front of my house. He told me I was going to start working with him. He said he was going to get me right. He let me know that if I messed up any more in school that I was going to live with him. If I messed up, I would have been fed to the Rah, who is family to me. I call him Uncle Rah. But I was terrified. I remember going back into the house shaking. I didn’t know what to do. I had to work out and I hated working out.”

In the beginning, Diego Jr. was having problems. He was playing catch up to the other 14-year-olds in the gym. He threw up every day. He was on the porky side. But he began feeling a change. He slimmed down. His endurance improved.

If there is a hero here it is Michelle. She has been the family’s sturdy foundation. Regardless of their age, Diego Jr. and Daylia are under orders from her that they are not permitted on a motorcycle. She is very guarded when it comes to her children. She never suppressed her children’s desire to know about their father.

“I know my dad had his demons, and I know he drank, that’s why I really admire my mom,” Diego Jr. said. “But every man has their demons. I prefer to look at the good. There is bad and good in everyone. I will say this, the woman who went through the worst was my mom. And she was the one who would always tell me how amazing my father was. I know he had horrible, terrible flaws that made him have issues. But at the same time, my dad was a great family man who was there for his kids.

“My father, Ryan, and my mom raised me to be accountable.”

Diego Jr. is physically distinctly different from his father. His round, chubby face is not his father’s long, narrow veneer. He is 5-foot-6 and hopes he can reach his dad’s lithe 5-foot-11 frame in his later teenage years.

In stark contrast, Daylia looks just like her dad with long hair. She is heading to the University of Nevada at Reno to major in psychology. Daylia was aware something happened to her father when she was younger, but Lewis stepped in as Daylia’s father, and respectfully kept Chico’s memory alive.

Lewis would watch Chico’s old fights with Diego Jr., while Daylia never needed to go far to see her dad—Chico stares right back at her every morning in the mirror.

Daylia knows she is the daughter of a fighter, and not just any fighter, one of the most courageous that ever fought.

“My mom and my dad (Lewis) were very open about keeping my (biological) father’s memory alive,” Daylia said. “I do sometimes wonder what it must have been like seeing my dad after fights. It is a struggle to fully understand who my dad was as a person. There were times I was curious. You hear a lot of good stories, but you hear some bad stories. The one thing I know is that my father always had heart. His determination and spirit were never questioned by anyone. I have pictures of my dad signing people’s jerseys at baseball games. I still keep those pictures a part of me. I have some of his old shoes in my room. I have his face.”

At Spring Valley High School, 5-foot-4 Daylia ran the 800-meter and 1,600-meter races in track and the 5.4K in cross country. She suffered a stress fracture her junior year. The injury hindered her senior season. Still, she ran. She competed through the pain—like her father would have. She does not plan to run in college. When Daylia graduated high school on May 22, she received her diploma, tilted her head upwards, looked to the sky and said, “We did it” to her father.

“That hit me emotionally, and it was something I did not expect,” Daylia said. “My (paternal) grandmother told me how proud my dad would have been seeing me graduate. I know my dad had plans for me, and without him being there, I grew up exactly the way he wanted. The site where my dad was killed, I pass almost every day. I just got my license recently and I wanted to go over to the cemetery and tie one of my high school cords around his tombstone.

“It was a fight to get into Reno. There were moments when I wondered if I was going to be accepted. I was not going to give up. I have my father’s drive. I have my father’s spirit and I have my father’s heart. I realize my father was not perfect. One of his strengths was also a weakness. My father was very bold. It is admired in a boxing ring, and outside the ring, being bold could get you hurt. My father never thought anything could hurt him. My message to everyone was my dad has a legacy, he had courage everyone knows him for, and it is something he leaves in my brother Diego, something that he leaves in both of us.”

Michelle, who is in real estate, is bracing herself for Chico’s Hall of Fame induction. She knows she will not hold up. She also knows once her children see her drop tears, they will, too.

In March 2022, during his first sparring session at Richard Steele’s gym in Vegas, Diego Jr. was plowed by a kid with vastly more experience. The familiar thing is he left the ring bloody and bruised with a gleaming smile underneath, and repeating to Rahman and Daylia, “I love it.”

“Genetics is a crazy thing,” Diego Jr. said. “I got beat up pretty bad the first time; I came back the next day. I was heading in a bad direction. I was no angel. I will never forget my mom’s disappointed look when I was brought home after I was caught sneaking out of school. I was unhealthy, a chubby little computer nerd who stayed in his room. If not for boxing, I would be a nobody, doing nothing. I thank boxing for changing my life.

“I know it changed my dad’s.”

 

Joseph Santoliquito is a Hall of Fame, award-winning sportswriter who has been working for Ring Magazine/RingTV.com since October 1997 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.

 



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