Pedro Diaz (born November 26, 1962 in Santa Clara,

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

) is a Cuban-American boxing trainer and entrepreneur. As an amateur boxing trainer, Diaz worked with the Cuban national team for four

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He also worked with the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...

for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. As a professional boxing trainer, Diaz trains a stable of boxers and

MMA Mixed martial arts (MMA), sometimes referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred (NHB), and ultimate fighting, and originally referred to as Vale Tudo is a full-contact combat sport based on strike (attack), striking, grappling and ground f ...

fighters, including Roamer Alexis Angulo, Ivan Baranchyk,

Xu Can Xu Can (; born March 9, 1994) is a Chinese professional boxer who held the WBA (Regular) featherweight title from 2019 to 2021. As of December 2021, Xu is rated as the world's ninth-best active featherweight by ''The Ring'' magazine, and tenth ...

Miguel Cotto Miguel Ángel Cotto Vázquez (born October 29, 1980) is a Puerto Rican former professional boxer who competed from 2001 to 2017. He is a multiple-time world champion, and the first Puerto Rican boxer to win world titles in four weight classes, ...

, Filip Hrgovic,

Guillermo Rigondeaux Guillermo Rigondeaux Ortiz (; born 30 September 1980) is a Cuban professional boxer. He is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the unified WBA (Super), WBO and ''Ring'' magazine super bantamweight titles between 2013 and ...

Tyrone Spong Tyrone Clinton Spong (born 3 September 1985) is a Surinamese-Dutch professional boxer and mixed martial artist and former kickboxer. As a boxer, he held the WBC and WBO Latino heavyweight titles in 2018. In kickboxing, he is the former WFCA cr ...

, and

Vitor Belfort Vítor Vieira Belfort (; born 1 April 1977) is a Brazilian mixed martial artist who competes in the Heavyweight and Middleweight divisions. Belfort previously competed for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), where he fought in the Heavywe ...

Early life and Cuba

Before becoming a boxing trainer, Diaz trained under

Alcides Sagarra ''Alcides'' is a genus of uraniid moths from northern Australia, New Guinea, and other islands in the region. They are diurnal and strongly marked with iridescent colours. List of species * ''Alcides agathyrsus'' Kirsch, 1877 yn.= A. boops ...

and was an accomplished amateur boxer. He attended the Cuban Sports University specializing in boxing, and in 1999 he earned the title of Doctor in Pedagogical Sciences.

America and professional boxing

In 2010 Diaz moved to the United States and continued training boxers and

UFC The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Zuffa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. It is the largest MMA ...

fighters as well. Diaz trained boxers for notable fights such as

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto, billed as ''Ring Kings'', was a boxing super welterweight bout held on May 5, 2012, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Mayweather won the fight by unanimous decision in what w ...

, Nonito Donaire vs Guillermo Rigondeaux, Vasyl Lomachenko vs Guillermo Rigondeaux, which was the first time two dual Olympic gold medalist fought on a professional stage, and Jose Zepeda vs Ivan Baranchyk, which won the 2020 boxing fight of the year by

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...

and USA Today Sports.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Diaz, Pedro 1962 births Living people Cuban boxing trainers