Liu was off his feet for the first time at Top Rank today...
7:12am - Began the morning with the first encounter between the late Diego Corrales and Joel Casamayor. Casa's great against most pressure Fighters. The Katsidis and Corrales fights were excellent, so was the Campbell fight, as opposed to the Castillo and Santa Cruz fights where he stunk the joint up. This was the fight stopped on two very bad cuts to Corrales' lip:
Corrales/Casa I.
7:45am - 1.6 mile run.
10:30am - Gym Time.
5 minute stretch.
1 round ring-jacks.
2 rounds Shadowboxing.
2 rounds canvas heavybag after gearing-up.
Round-robin sparring:
First 2 rounds with Junior. I felt slow today, sluggish, but the good news is Junior counter-punched a lot more and forced me to work my defense while coming forward. Then somewhere in the first round (I think), our legs got crossed up and I soared past him and hit the deck. Everyone had a good laugh who was looking, and Diego ruled it a slip. I got Junior back by purposely tripping him later, I'm pretty adept at stepping in deep and jamming my right knee into the outside of an Orthodox Fighter's left knee as they try to back away to their left side.
Last 2 rounds were with Diego, and Mike was on me to throw more than 1 or 2 at a time, which I do when getting winded a bit. But today I was also dealing with two things. One is that my right shoulder's been killing me. Second is that I was trying to better tie-in offense AND defense simultaneously. It's difficult to intertwine them both with a volume puncher in front of you. I felt my defense was well, only got caught a couple times, once with a really good bodyshot that sent the air out of my lungs. Lucky for me I endure those well. Landed a pretty nice left hook and right uppercut of my own as well. Diego's good at defending 3 out of every 5 punches I throw save for the MOST tricky or fast nowadays.
2 rounds Shadowboxing to cool down. My shoulder was tough to move, but Mike seemed impressed enough with me gutting it out to end training there.
Did 10 minutes on the stairmaster after just to get in some more cardio work.
Gym Moments:
Sharif said he sparred with Ishe Smith yesterday, and beat up Ishe to the point where he spit in Sharif's face. Shairf said it wouldn't have happened had he not tried to knock Sharif out. He said Ishe's got no discipline.
He also speaks French. So Diego speaks Spanish and French, Sharif speaks Ugandan and French, and I'm speaking a bit of Ugandan and speak some Spanish (not nearly as well as Diego).
Now if only any of us could understand what Mike says when he has a mouth full of salad.
I was also talking to Dyah about his Pops. Then I told him I thought it was funny that Din Thomas while talking shit about Mayweather said "where all these Boxers at?" And Howard was standing behind him. "Well if you turn around Din, there's one." Dyah said it was ridiculous. In his words:
"Pfff, I used to put them hands on Din, he got no bidness callin' out Floyd just to get beat the fuck up."
