By: Sean Crose
If you know boxing, you know David Diamante. Aside from Michael Buffer, and Jimmy Lennon Jr, the fifty year old New Yorker is the most famous ring announcer on earth. With his deep, smooth vocal work and his long dreads, Diamante is unique in appearance, and quite frankly good at his job. Just how successful is Diamante at his chosen profession? So successful that he’s the premiere ring announcer for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing. When he steps into the ring on Saturday at San Diego’s Pechanga Arena, fans will be excited to see Diamante in action…and not simply because of his talent.
For earlier this winter Diamante got into a motorcycle accident that was serious enough for some to wonder if the man would ever return to his ring duties. “I hit a really bad patch of road, it took me out. It happened in Sunset Park in Brooklyn on Third Avenue,” Diamante told DAZN. “If you know that stretch of road, there’s a lot of bad patches, so I hit something, went down, I slid and hit a parked van, and it just cracked me in half.” While he’s still not fully recovered, the man is excited to return to work. Still, Diamante doesn’t want to distract fans from Saturday’s main event. “I don’t want this to be about me,” he told DAZN, “I want it to be about the fighters.”
Although he’ll be a happy sight for viewers of tonight’s Chocolatito Gonzalez-Julio Caesar Martinez card, the cigar chomping ring announcer remains troubled by the incident that incapacitated him. “It’s really hard to talk about,” he told DAZN. “I think that’s going to be for a later date to talk about because to be really honest with you it was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life and I don’t say that lightly, it was horrific.”
Although he’s not a professional boxer himself, Diamante is certainly aware of the guts and determination required to perform well in the ring. Perhaps it was years in the fight business that inspired him while he was out of commission. “The fighter has to fight the fight,” he said. “I knew I had to fight this fight myself, but to have fans on the outside cheering you, it just gave me that extra….I already knew I had it in me because I know who I am, but it helped and I want to say ‘thank you’ to everyone.”