Recover, repent, return: Joseph Diaz Jr. mounts his comeback

Joseph Diaz Jnr used to be the obedient, straight-laced kid who brought pride to his neighborhood by becoming a 2012 U.S. Olympian, training diligently and making a steady run of entertaining fights as his followers tracked the progress of a future world champion.

As a boxer, he was Mr. Reliable, a straight-A student.

Then the belt arrived, and hell accompanied it.

What matters now is that Diaz, 31, has completed an intense recovery period from the four-year-long throes of alcohol addiction.

And on Saturday night, on the ProBox TV card from Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, Florida, the 33-6-1 (15 KOs) Diaz returns to the ring against Mexico’s Abraham Montoya, 22-6-1 (14 KOs), in a lightweight bout.

“I only have three pounds to go to be on weight,” Diaz told BoxingScene Wednesday morning as a Friday morning weigh-in looms.

“This is probably the best training camp I’ve had since the Tevin Farmer fight. I covered all my bases – my body’s good, my weight’s good, I’m healthy. I feel immensely prepared.”

It was in January 2020, when Diaz defeated Farmer by unanimous decision to capture the IBF super-featherweight belt, when the culmination of his life’s work was realized.

A few months later, the COVID pandemic hit and froze Diaz in a perpetual state of inactivity, celebration and basking in life as a world champion with boxing functioning as an “I’ll-get-to-it-later” afterthought. As Diaz told Kieran Mulvaney in a recent BoxingScene story, when Golden Boy Promotions rang him a year later to propose a fight on less than two months’ notice against Shavkatdhzon Rakminov, Diaz was left startled by inspecting the scale and looking at his weight: 196 pounds.

He did all he could to reach the 130-pound limit, but found his body shut down and missed weight and lost his belt by being more than three pounds over.

He returned five months later to score a unanimous decision over Javier Fortuna, but couldn’t quit drinking and endured a career-threatening losing skid to Devin Haney, William Zepeda, Mercito Gesta and then another defeat in April to Oscar Duarte that generated calls for retirement.

“It was mostly alcohol intake. In 2020, 2021, I was involved in a lot of other stuff too … I would wake up having withdrawals, needing a drink to calm my nerves and that was going on for about four years of my life,” Diaz said.

Saying his dopamine levels were off the charts, leading to depression and fits of failing to control his impulses, Diaz was involved in a slew of transgressions outside the ring, taking his life off the rails. 

“I was still training my ass off when I was drinking, but it was the temptation … I was drinking, all the girls,” he said. “It was hard to know who was real and who wasn’t. I was really lost in the sauce.

“I feel I’m a good-hearted person, so I always think everyone has real good intentions for me. It got to the point I was losing myself by trying to help everyone else and fulfill their dreams. It got to the point I needed alcohol to live. I lost my sanity. I didn’t want to live any more. I didn’t care about my life. I thought my career was over.”

The loss to Duarte coincided with the birth of his daughter.

“She’s changed my heart. It made me realize, ‘I’ve got to man up for my kids. I’ve got to stop feeling sorry for myself. I need to go check into rehab.’” Diaz said.

“I needed to go check myself in and that was the best decision, getting treated and talking to the Lord, and he blessed me with this opportunity.”

After spending 60 days at a rehab facility in San Antonio, Diaz learned that ProBox TV founder Garry Jonas also runs a treatment center in Plant City, Fla., Whitesands, that was offering him a chance to achieve sobriety and train. (Disclosure: ProBox TV owns BoxingScene.)

“ProBox got me into rehab and got me training. I knew it was a blessing from God, so I took advantage of it … I got baptized,” Diaz said.

“We don’t realize there’s spiritual warfare around us. When you get in tune with your purpose, when you realize the temptation and evil that comes at us, collides with us, and makes us do wrongful things to keep us from our potential, that’s all real.

“I realized that. And here I am now, in the best shape of my life, ready to do what I know I need to do because this is not only my purpose, but to inspire other people who are dealing with the same toxic things I was dealing with.

“I feel great. It’ll be 150 days sober on fight night … I’ve never been this sober in my life – since I was 17. Reaching this point, I’m more mentally strong, more mentally aware. I don’t have negative withdrawal symptoms or negative thoughts making me churn … the dopamine levels are all natural now.”

The lost opportunities of defeating Haney or Zepeda have washed away. 

Diaz actually enters Saturday’s event at rock bottom on boxing terms – unranked in the lightweight division.

He’s targeting the Saturday victory, hopeful it leads him to a formidable contender like Golden Boy’s Floyd “Kid Austin” Schofield, the WBA’s second-ranked lightweight.

“With my skillset, potential, what I overcame to get here and keeping my eyes on prize, I can do it,” he said. “I know it’s all God’s timing. I’ve got to trust the process.”

All he can control for now is how he’ll fare in Saturday’s event.

“This is going to be the best performance of my career,” Diaz said. “Not only am I 148 days sober, I’ve been busting my ass every day. Eating and hydrating well … the best nutrition. I’m in the best shape of my life.

“You’re going to see Joseph 2.0. I’m still only 31, and I’m still in my prime now that all the demons, the evil things and all the toxins are out of me. I’m at my best and you guys are going to see that. I was like, ‘Lord, give me another opportunity, I know I messed up.’ I repented all my sins.”