Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

Terence Crawford of Omaha is a two-time world champion who’s proven his mettle time and again against tough foes. When he climbs through the ropes into the ring on fight night it’s just him and his opponent in a mano a mano test of will and skill and toughness. But he’ll be the first to tell you that a whole team of people helps get him ready for that harsh proving ground of the square circle and its sweet science. His Team Crawford is a group of coaches and trainers who put him through his paces so that come fight night he’s prepared to take care of business. The people who make up Team Crawford have been with the champ for years. One of its members is Esau Dieguez, a Guatemala native who fought for many years and wound up in Omaha looking for work and fell in with Crawford and Co. and has been the fighter’s trusted pad man during his remarkable rise up the boxing ladder. In my El Perico profile of Dieguez learn something about his own journey to get to this point of being a key member in the camp of one of boxing’s greatest new stars and perhaps it’s next superstar. Top Rank’s Bob Arum thinks Crawford is that fighter and after Crawford easily dispatched Thomas Dulorme in Arlington, Texas on April 18 to capture the vacant WBO light welterweight title only months after his second successful defense of the WBO lightweight title he won in early 2014, it’s jard to to argue the point. Just know the next time you see Crawford fight that Dieguez had a hand in his success.

Pad man Esau Dieguez gets world champ Terence Crawford ready

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in El Perico

Few know what it’s like being on the receiving end of punches from a world boxing champion. Esau Dieguez knows. Most days he absorbs punches thrown by former world lightweight boxing champion Terence “Bud” Crawford when the champ’s in training. That’s because Dieguez is the mitt man or pad man in the Team Crawford camp.

Wearing well-padded gloves, Dieguez catches blow after after blow offered by Crawford as the two men move around the ring in a classic workout to help the fighter deliver crisper, faster single shots or combinations. Perfecting the Sweet Science gets Crawford sharp.

He was plenty sharp last year. He dethroned lightweight champ Ricky Burns in Scotland to win the WBO title before twice defending the title in his hometown of Omaha in front of large, CenturyLink Center crowds. Those three big wins in 2014 earned him wide acclaim as fighter of the year. Crawford then relinquished his title to go after the vacant WBO junior welterweight title in an April 18 fight against Thomas Dulorme in Arlington, Texas.

Dieguez, 43, is among the veteran coaches and trainers who get Crawford ready to fight. Dieguez has worked with him since 2004. Their association goes back earlier, to when Dieguez, 16 years his senior, fought professionally and a promising teenager named Terence Crawford was a sparring partner.

The young fighter impressed him.

“Even when he was like 13-14 years old, he was really good. I thought he was going to be a world champion,” says Dieguez. “He has the talent. He’s just a natural. And he works really hard. A lot of fighters, they’ve got the talent, but they don’t work hard. He’s got the talent and he works hard, too. Man, he works really, really hard.

“You have to be smart and work hard to be somebody in this sport.”

For a long time Dieguez harbored his own boxing dreams. After a successful amateur career in his native Guatemala, where he won national championships. he moved to Calif. to turn pro. Things didn’t work out and this husband and father of five resettled in Omaha. He found a steady job with Quality Pork International in the shipping department and hooked up with the CW boxing club, whose budding star was Crawford.

By the time Dieguez called it quits as a fighter, Crawford emerged as one of America’s top talents. Dieguez has been there as he’s evolved from promising amateur to dominating pro.

Dieguez still works with young boxers at Crawford and McIntyre’s B&B Boxing Academy in North Omaha, where he works with national qualifiers Abel Soriano, Sergio Ramirez and Treven Coleman Avant. But his niche catching leather from Crawford trumps everything as he may not get a chance to work with a world champ again. Besides, it’s special being part of the inner circle that prepares the champ for battle.

“I’m the coach that works the mitts with him. It helps him a lot with snapping punches. It helps him with a lot of techniques like counterpunching. That’s what I do with him – I have him work on his combinations and counter punches, his timing, his speed.”

Dieguez has been called “the best pad man in the business” by Crawford and by Crawford’s co-manager, Brian BoMac” McIntyre.

“Yes, that’s what they call me,” he says. “I’m just trying to be the best at what i do. God gave me the skill to work with the pads and I enjoy it.”

McIntyre also refers to Dieguez as “my right-hand man,” adding that his trust in him is such that “he can step in the head coach’s position at any time – if one of us goes down, Esau is right there. Esau is the man. He and Terence have the best rhthym I’ve seen since (Floyd) Mayweather and Roger (Mayweather). I do the pads during camp but that week of the fight I step back and I tell Esau to make sure Terence’s rhythm and speed and power is there, and Esau will be right on it.”

So just how hard does Crawford hit?

“Man, I cannot explain it,” Dieguez says. “I work with a lot of fighters but he’s stronger than the rest. He’s naturally strong. When he throws his punches he doesn’t throw only with the arm, he throws with his whole body. That makes his punching stronger. He’s still working to snap those punches and put them together with more power.”

Heading into Crawford’s April 18 fight, his first since moving up to the junior welterweight class, Dieguez felt Crawford would be stronger than ever with the added five pounds and not struggling to make weight. Crawford indeed proved strong in the heavier division, scoring an easy technical knockout of Dulorme to capture the vacant WBO title.

Dieguez sees Crawford “getting better and better” and the team around Crawford getting better, too.”

He says just as Crawford’s learned to hone his instincts to become a real technician, Team Crawford members have learned to combine their experience and expertise to push the fighter to greater heights.

Contributing to the champ’s success and seeing it happen in Omaha, he says, “is something I thought would never happen,” adding, “Being part of the team of a world champion is an honor and a blessing.”

When Crawford goes off to train in Colorado Springs, where the altitude improves his conditioning, the team goes with him, including Dieguez, and they train right alongside the champ.

“We do all what he does, running in the mountains, cutting weight. We’re always together. That’s motivation for him. We keep pushing him. We all have the same goals, we’re all thinking greatness for Bud and working really hard for it. All of us are focused on it.”

Team members wear T-shirts, sweatshirts and caps that read: Mindset. A not so subtle reminder of their single-minded focus.

Dieguez and Co. were in Colo. six weeks, stopped in Omaha for a few days and then went to Texas for Crawford’s fight with Dulorme.

“It’s not easy to stay away from the family but this is what we have to do. When we work for our goal we have to make sacrifices. It’s part of the price. People that don’t pay the price, don’t get nothing. We’re paying the price and everybody’s happy with the results.”