Lightweight prospect Juan Diaz had been in this position before. He was in the middle of his nip-and-tuck battle with Eleazar Contreras when he would be sent to the canvas with a quick counter-left hook in round six. In front of a national audience watching on NBC, Diaz found himself on the seat of his trunks looking up at his opponent.

It was almost two years ago, in his 12th pro bout, when he was dumped by the same punch by Ubaldo Hernandez. It would change the course of the fight and Diaz would walk away with a controversial eight-round split decision that had the boo-birds out at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas. The fight and it's aftermath were so traumatic, Diaz broke down into tears when he was interviewed by Showtime's commentators.

Against the tough Contreras, Diaz would just calmly get up, fight his ass off, and win a hard-earned 10-round unanimous decision that brought about a standing ovation from the live audience at the Pechanga Resort this past May.

Diaz, 21-0, who faces Francisco Lorenzo this Saturday on Showtime, had clearly done some growing up since the Hernandez fight.

"I knew the fight was close and I knew that I had to do something big," Diaz told MaxBoxing of his bout with Contreras. "I had to either win big on points or try to get a knockdown or knockout to win the fight because I knew up to the point before I got knocked down, it was close and then after I got knocked down, it was even closer or maybe I thought he was ahead on the scorecards so it was a real, real tough fight."

The experience with Hernandez came in handy.

"I think it might have been a little bit different," explained Hernandez, 19. "This time I got up like nothing. He just caught me with a good punch. It didn't hurt me and I got up right away and kept my focus.

"If it would've been the first time that that would have happened to me than maybe I would have gotten a little bit scared and maybe I would have gotten out of control and out of my game plan."

The post-fight aftermath with Hernandez was one of the more bizarre situations in recent years, especially when you consider that he won the fight. Diaz tried to learn from that episode and move on.

"The thing I tried to do was to just forget about what happened because everybody was telling me stuff and then I started thinking myself, that (out of) all of the champions that we have now, most of them have been knocked down and it's just a matter of who can get up and keep on fighting strong, so I just put that in my head -- 'Even the best get knocked down. It's just who gets up and wins the fight'. So I tried to forget about what happened that night and just keep on winning."

While some teased Diaz for "crying like a baby" afterwards, his trainer, Willie Savannah, is quick to point out, that in many ways, that's exactly what he was.

"Going back to the Hernandez fight, Juan was 17 years old, and to that point -- even though he had won 11 national titles and international titles -- he won all those as a junior," Savannah said. "He came out of the junior division into the pros. All of the other guys came out of the open division, where they fight grown men for years. But he'd been fighting 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids and when he went into the pros he always had his way with them more or less. He dominated most of them.

"So the thing that worried me the most was what would happen if he got into a tough fight with a grown man?"

Against a 24-year-old Hernandez, a grizzled veteran of the sport, Diaz would get knocked down, hit low, cut and suffer a swollen left hand in winning a close decision.

"That fight he grew up a lot," Savannah said of the experience. "Everybody would be wondering 'What would happen to a young kid if all this stuff happened to him?' This didn't happen to him for trophies like it did for all the other guys and I was concerned that maybe the baby might come out of him. But then after that fight he never showed anything. After his next couple of fights he called me to the bag one day and he told me and Ronnie Shields 'That's OK, I'm gonna show those old men how a teenager fights' and it really didn't bother him that much emotionally, it just makes him want to fight harder."

Diaz, who's nicknamed 'the Baby Bull' because of his hard-charging and aggressive style, will never be a stylish fighter. He's an action fighter who lacks a huge punch but combined with his strong will, he is the perfect television fighter. His fights are filled with punches and he eats up rounds. But since his bout with Hernandez, Diaz has worked on adding a bit more finesse to his repertoire.

"I'm doing a little bit more boxing than I was before," Diaz said. "Now I'm just not throwing punches out of nowhere, I'm using my jab a little bit more, throwing my punches better."

It was all apart of making the adjustment from the amateur game to the professional style of fighting.

"What we did after that was to get him to change his boxing style a little bit because as an amateur what he did was when the bell rang, you wind him out and he just jumped on everybody and he was stronger than most kids," Savannah explained. "Even though he didn't look stronger, he threw so many more punches. So I said 'Look we gotta do something a little different'. I always knew he had fast hands, he had a good jab but he never had to use his jab as an amateur. So after that fight we decided to make him a more complete fighter."

And while Diaz will never have the physique of a Jeff Lacy or Floyd Mayweather, his body has looked leaner and tighter in recent fights. But Savannah says they haven't worked any harder than before in getting their fighter in shape.

"No, believe or not, it's the same as it's been since he was 12 years old," he claims. "It's just that's his body. That's the way his body looked, that's his body structure. Some people are never going to have a body that will get a six-pack. He was in great shape but it just didn't look like it to people watching on TV because he looked fat around the middle and that was just his baby fat. People didn't realize he was just a baby when he turned pro, he was 16.

"As each fight goes by, his body matures a little more and right now his body looks better than it did the last fight. And the last fight it looked better than the fight before. But he's just growing up."

Which seems to be a common them when people talk about Diaz and his continued rise.

"He was so young when he turned pro and he's growing up in front of us," said Kathy Duva of Main Events, which promotes Diaz. "And he's another one that I see getting better. He's learned something new, he's doing something different, and he's much more effective. He's such an action fighter and every round is exciting."

And now he takes on Lorenzo who comes in with a mark of 18-1.

"I've seen him fight before," Diaz says of his foe. "I know he's a real tough opponent. I can't take him lightly because I know he's going to come to the ring and try to win the fight."

In-between fights, Diaz is a student at the University of Houston, making him one of the few fighters going to a four year school.

"It's going real good," said Diaz of his scholastic life. "This past semester I was going six hours and I passed my classes and I decided to take the summer off this year."

Diaz is now a sophomore academically and he says that he's contemplating majoring in law. While it seems like an arduous task, Diaz enjoys balancing boxing with books.

"It gives me more focus, I go to school, I know that I have to do homework and I have to prepare for the gym, it doesn't give me time to slack off or fool round, go out into the streets or to go parties and stuff like that," he said. "Both things combined help me to be a better person at what I do, in boxing and in school."

This Saturday night he goes through another test.

ON THE PEACOCK

Diaz was one of the star performers on NBC's return to professional boxing in May. His battle with Contreras was one of the best fights of the year and help garner ratings that will have Main Events and NBC working again in September and in 2004.

"NBC was absolutely ecstatic with them as was I and in the future they are already asking how many times they can come back on next year," said Duva. "I think that's all good news. Going into NBC we talked about how there were no stars anymore, just guys fighting 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I mean, Evander Holyfield turned pro almost 20 years ago and Mike Tyson turned pro almost 20 years ago and De La Hoya 10 years ago.

"The guys who never fought on network television never became stars with the possible exception of Fernando Vargas, and so this is the new group. These guys will be the stars of tomorrow 10 years from now, 15 years from now, we'll be talking about 'When are they going to be finished?"

HBO RATING

HBO did some pretty strong ratings for this past weekend's doubleheader featuring Ricardo Mayorga and Vernon Forrest. Word is that they did an 8.1 for the main event. It must've been all the hard work Forrest did in promoting the fight beforehand.