Joel Casamayor

Joel Casamayor
Data
Birth Name	Joel Casamayor Johnson
Weight class	lightweight
nationality	Cuban
birthday	July 12, 1971
place of birth	Guantánamo
style	Legal display
size	1.70 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	41
Victories	36
Knockout victories	22nd
Defeats	4th
draw	1

Joel Casamayor Johnson (born July 12, 1971 in Guantánamo , Cuba ) is a Cuban professional boxer.

Amateur career

Casamayor achieved 333 wins out of 30 defeats in his long amateur career. In 1989 he was in Bayamón Junior World Champion in the bantamweight class . In 1992 he took part in the Olympic Games in Barcelona for Cuba and won the gold medal. At the amateur world championship in 1993 in Tampere he finished second, but failed in 1995 in Berlin in the first round against the Russian Raimkul Malachbekow .

Casamayor was also intended as the Cuban representative for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 , but withdrew from the Cuban team in the run-up to the tournament and turned professional in the USA .

Success as an amateur

• Junior World Champion 1989
• Central American and Caribbean Games - Runner-up 1990
• Olympic champion 1992
• Chemistry Cup - Winner 1992, 1996
• Cuban champion 1993
• Amateur World Championship - runner-up 1993
• World Cup - third in 1994
• Goodwill Games - runner-up in 1994

Professional career

Casamayor played his first professional fight in Miami in September 1996 and won against the American David Chamendis by first-round knockout. On June 19, 1999 he won the interim title of the WBA in the half-light weight by a points victory over the Mexican Antonio Hernández , which entitled him to the challenge of the reigning WBA world champion. On May 21, 2000 it came to a clash with the defending champion, the undefeated Korean Baek Jong-kwon. Casamayor won the fight and the title by technical knockout in the fifth round, after the fight was abandoned due to lacerations from the Korean in his favor.

In the following years he defended the WBA title four times before it came to a union fight with the WBO title holder Acelino Freitas on January 12, 2002 . After a knockdown in the third round and a point deduction in the sixth round for looking up Casamayor lost the fight and the WBA title over twelve rounds just on points.

In January 2003, he defeated the unbeaten American Nate Campbell (23-0) and met on 4 October 2003 in an eliminator of the IBF to Diego Corrales . Both boxers had to go to the ground in the course of the fight, until the fight in the sixth round was abandoned by Corrales in favor of Casamayors due to heavily bleeding wounds in the mouth. Due to the controversial circumstances, there was a direct rematch on March 6, 2004. This time Corrales won just on points and received the vacant WBO title, which had previously been resigned by Freitas as a result of an increase in weight.

Then Casamayor switched to the lightweight and defeated the undefeated Puerto Rican Daniel Seda (20-0-1) on points. In the fifth round, both boxers were on the ground. Within a short time Casamayor got the opportunity to fight for a world title; on December 4, 2004 he went against the WBC title holder José Luis Castillo , to whom he was defeated, however, narrowly and controversially on points. In his next fight he boxed in June 2005 against the undefeated Kyrgyz Olympic athlete Almasbek Raimkulow in a draw.

On October 7, 2006, there was a third meeting with Diego Corrales, who was meanwhile in possession of the WBC lightweight belt. Corrales, whose planned third fight against Castillo had previously been canceled because of his weight problems, was ironically unable to meet the weight limit for this fight, so that he was stripped of the title after the weigh-in. Casamyor stayed within the weight limit and was still able to win the title, which had now been declared vacant, which he finally managed with a narrow point win. In February 2007, however, the title was stripped from him because he failed to defend himself against David Díaz and instead planned a unification fight against Freitas, which ultimately did not materialize.

Casamayor only narrowly and controversially defeated José Armando Santa Cruz on points in November 2007, but convinced in March 2008 with a victory by technical knockout in the tenth round against the undefeated Australian Michael Katsidis . On September 13, 2008, however, he lost to Juan Manuel Márquez for the first time in his professional career prematurely, after two knockdowns in the eleventh round, the fight was canceled by the referee.

Web links

• Joel Casamayor in the BoxRec database

predecessor	Office	successor
Baek Jong-kwon	World Half Lightweight Boxing Champion ( WBA ) May 21, 2000 - January 12, 2002	Acelino Freitas
Diego Corrales	World lightweight boxing champion ( WBC ) October 7, 2006 - February 1, 2007	David Díaz