Referee Tony Weeks, right, steps in after Diego Corrales lands his final punch on Jose Luis Castillo in their WBC/WBO lightweight championship on May 7. The two fight again Saturday. Photo by Isaac Brekken/Review-Journal Diego Corrales celebrates his 10th-round knockout of Jose Luis Castillo in their lightweight championship bout on May 7. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Don Elbaum has been around boxing nearly all his life and has spent nearly a half-century in the sport as a promoter, manager, matchmaker and referee, among other odd jobs.

He watched Willie Pep fight live and promoted one of the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson's final bouts.

But little that Elbaum has seen in his career, he said, could match what he saw from Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo on May 7.

Elbaum is a hard man to please considering the number of great bouts he has witnessed. But he said he could barely remain in his seat as he watched Corrales and Castillo pummel each other for nine-plus rounds until a miraculous finish gave Corrales an improbable 10th round knockout.

The two will meet again Saturday at the Thomas & Mack Center on Showtime Pay-Per-View, but no matter how good it may be, it will have a hard time matching the ebb and flow of the May 7 bout in Elbaum's view.

"That (10th) round maybe was the greatest round I ever saw," Elbaum said. "I was sitting in my room watching it and all I did throughout the fight was go, 'Oh my God.' I was screaming my head off. It was unbelievable."

He drew the syllables out on the word unbelievable. He could barely contain himself.

"To say one fight is the greatest ever, I don't know that anybody could do that," Elbaum said. "But whenever you talk about great fights, all-timers, that fight is going to be on that list."

Nigel Collins, editor of The Ring magazine, called the bout the greatest lightweight fight ever.

Collins, like Elbaum, watched on television and barely could contain himself.

"About halfway through the fight, it hit me that I was seeing something pretty special," Collins said. "Very often, you'll have fights where the momentum swings from round to round and that gets people excited. But in this fight, it was changing two or three times per round.

"For me, I'm a fan before anything else. I was a fan before I got into this business and when I'm in my own home, I remain a fan. I sat on my couch that night with my mouth open, reveling in what was an example of what boxing really could be."

Corrales-Castillo set the standard, but in the past five years, there have been a number of similar battles. Even in the last calendar year, the sport has seen such epic bouts as Erik Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera III, Morales-Manny Pacquiao, Jorge Arce-Hussein Hussein and Carlos Hernandez-Jesus Chavez.

That is due in large part, Collins believes, to the lack of defensive skills. Few current fighters can match the old-timers for defensive ability. That, along with the trend of the good fighters fighting each other on television, has created a climate in which these all-out brawls can occur, Collins said.

Fans, he said, won't buy appearance fights any longer, where a television network just tries to showcase a star. He cited a phenomenon of several years ago begun on the Internet called the "Roycott," where fans tired of the low caliber of opposition that Roy Jones Jr. was facing and organized a protest.

"In the last four or five years, the good fighters are fighting each other and you don't get these bouts where you have gimmes and phony mandatories that have been foisted upon the public," Collins said. "When you combine that with the fact that most of today's fighters are offensive-minded and don't have the great defensive skills that fighters in the '30s, '40s and '50s had, it sets up to give you some great action."

Boxing writer, broadcaster and historian Steve Farhood, who will serve as an analyst on Saturday's broadcast for Showtime Pay-Per-View, said the only drawback to Corrales-Castillo I is that going in, the fighters weren't as well known to the public like Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns were in their day.

"That's really the only criteria where this fight would have to take a backseat to any of the other ones in history you might want to name, like (Muhammad) Ali-(Joe) Frazier or Hearns-Hagler or (Aaron) Pryor-(Alexis) Arguello, because going in, Diego and Jose Luis weren't as well known as those other guys.

"But all the criteria I use to brand it a great fight was met. ... That was one of those fights, if you didn't like that one, you just don't like boxing, period."