America at Large:In the 10th round of their memorable slugfest on the night of May 7th, 2005, Diego (Chico) Corrales was knocked down twice by the Mexican champion Jose Luis Castillo. Chico climbed off the floor on both occasions, and before the round was over had improbably knocked out Castillo.

It was a stunning and thrilling conclusion to what many consider to have been the most spectacular fight - and surely the most spectacular round - in lightweight annals.

Corrales-Castillo was a near-unanimous choice as the 2005 Fight of the Year.

Who could have guessed then that it would be the last fight Chico Corrales would win? Or that, two years later to the day, the two-time world champion would be dead, killed in a high-speed motorcycle accident at 29?

The answer to both questions is, apparently: a lot of people.

I spent the better part of last week in Las Vegas, where he lived, but never ran into Corrales. The closest I came was a second-hand conversation on Saturday afternoon. Four of us - myself, Michael Katz, Budd Schulberg, and his son, Benn - had gone to a Vegas pub where we could have a late lunch and watch the Kentucky Derby.

Benn, considerably closer in age to Corrales, was a close friend, and phoned him on his mobile from the restaurant. Chico told him that, since he didn't have a ticket to that evening's Floyd Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya fight at the MGM Grand, he probably wouldn't see us that night.

Two years earlier, it's safe to say, any number of promoters, managers and television or casino executives would have been tripping over one another in an effort to have Corrales as a ringside guest, but over the past few months he had so effectively burned his bridges that nobody much cared whether he was there or not.

And 48 hours later he was dead.

The first Corrales-Castillo fight naturally begat a rematch, and a few days before that October's scheduled return bout I interviewed Chico on radio. My assumption was that Corrales, who could have boxed circles around the strong but plodding Mexican, would have learned his lesson and would approach him differently this time.

No, replied Corrales. He wasn't being paid a million bucks to engage in a tactical chess match. If boxing fans wanted to see another war, then a war they were going to get.

As it turned out, Castillo somewhat disgracefully didn't make the weight for the rematch. Corrales could have collected his show-up money, taken his lightweight championship belts and gone home. Instead, he agreed to proceed with a non-title fight despite the obvious physical disadvantages. And when he was knocked out in four rounds, he refused to use the weight issue as an alibi.

I was in Dublin for the Bernard Dunne-David Martinez fight last June when the shocking news arrived that Castillo had failed to make the weight yet again, this time for the rubber match scheduled in Las Vegas that same evening. This time trainer Joe Goossen refused to let Corrales go through with the fight. Corrales left approximately $1.2 million on the table that night.

His next defence was to have been against the Cuban Joel Casamayor last October. This time, ironically enough, Corrales himself came in over the lightweight limit, and forfeited his title before he even stepped into the ring. He wound up losing a split decision in any case.

Joe Goossen had contributed significantly to the Castillo win. (When Chico spit out his gumshield after the second knockdown, the trainer took such a long time cleaning it that referee Tony Weeks docked him a point, but it allowed Corrales to recuperate to the point that he could finish the job). Now he couldn't even get Corrales to pick up the telephone.

Goossen, who had yet to be paid for the Casamayor fight, went to court last month and was granted an attachment on a house Corrales owned. Goossen made sure it wasn't the one Chico's estranged wife and kids were living in. Michelle Corrales was six months pregnant, and Joe didn't want to see her tossed out on the street.

Chico was not a bad kid, but his life seemed to have been a litany of bad decisions. Shortly after suffering his first loss, to Mayweather six years ago, he was jailed for 14 months on a domestic abuse charge, and more recently he had lost his driver's licence following a conviction for driving under the influence. Many of his ill-fated decisions appear to have been alcohol-related, although at this point there is no evidence of booze or drugs having been involved in the mishap that took his life.

Despite having earned millions, he was by most accounts nearly broke, and the government was hot on his tail for back taxes. He signed a promotional contract with De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, and used the signing bonus to get the IRS off his back. When it turned out he was still under contract to another promoter, Gary Shaw, Golden Boy took him to court. To avoid fraud charges, Corrales recently stipulated to an agreement to return the money.

Last month he returned to the ring, this time as a welterweight, and on April 7th at a Shrine Mosque in Missouri he was unanimously outpointed by Joshua Clottey of Ghana.

Two weeks later, according to the bill of sale that was found on his body, he went out and bought himself a new Suzuki racing bike.

"He had an X-Games lifestyle," said Shaw, who viewed the body before the medics had even been able to pry the helmet off what had once been Chico's head. "He did everything hard and fast."

Indeed, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal that appeared the day of the ill-fated Castillo III weigh-in, Corrales recounted to scribe Kevin Iole tales of jumping from airplanes, daredevil skiing and scuba-diving in the midst of sharks.

"I'm only young once, and unless somebody hasn't told me something yet, I only get to live once," Corrales told Iole. "If I couldn't do this stuff now, stuff I always wanted to do, I would never get a chance to do it."

According to Las Vegas police, Corrales was going at least 100 miles an hour when he lost control after hitting a speed bump and clipped the back of a 1997 Honda Accord. He was thrown into the air and landed in the path of a Mercedes coming the other way.

This time he wasn't getting up. He was pronounced dead before the police even figured out who he was. Corrales' manager, the rap mogul James Prince, was first of his acquaintances to arrive on the scene and identify the body on Monday afternoon.

It was almost as if it were destined to end this way. And while many were saddened, few seemed surprised.

"Diego was not immune to the pitfalls of life, especially as a young man surrounded by the fame and fortune of this game," said Goossen, his estranged trainer. "His better times in boxing were behind him. I'm sure he felt he was in a bad spot. It's too bad Diego couldn't stay in the top place he once was. Now, we'll all say prayers for him."

Joshua Clottey phoned in his condolences from Africa. In Mexico, where he is training for next month's fight against Ricky Hatton, Castillo said: "We had what I would call a friendly rivalry when we got into the ring. We had two amazing fights, and our names will be linked forever."