Background
Diaconu was born in Ploieşti, Romania, but fought out of Montreal, Quebec, Canada for almost his entire professional career.
Diaconu was born in Ploieşti, Romania, but fought out of Montreal, Quebec, Canada for almost his entire professional career.
Diaconu represented Romania at the 2000 Sydney Olympics as a Middleweight. Olympic results were:
Defeated Abdelghani Kinzi (Algeria) 19-9
Defeated Jitender Kumar (India) 12-3
Lost to Jorge Gutiérrez (Cuba) KO 1
Following the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Diaconu turned professional as a light heavyweight. Diaconu vacated his Canadian title to face Rico Hoye in a WBC Light Heavyweight eliminator bout.
He was successful, dominating Hoye (then 21-1) until a referee TKO stoppage in the 3rd round.title=Fight:1171651 The fight was the headline bout of ESPNs Wednesday Night Fights held on 9 May 2007 after being postponed from its original 23 March date.
He lost his WBC Light Heavyweight Title against Jean Pascal on 19 June 2009 and also lost a rematch on 11 December 2009 at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Diaconu"s last fight was on 21 May 2011 against Chad Dawson, who defeated Diaconu by a unanimous decision after twelve rounds.
Adrian Diaconu announced his retirement from boxing, stating that he felt a lack of support from Interbox to obtain for him important fights. Jean Pascal and Chad Dawson were the only people to defeat the Romanian inside the boxing ring.
In October 2007, David Haye described Diaconu as "the future of the light heavyweight division.".
As an amateur he won a bronze medal in the light middleweight division at the 1997 World Amateur Boxing Championships and silver in 1999. He then went onto win his first title in June 2005, taking the Canadian Light Heavyweight Title after a 5th round knockout of Conal MacPhee. In December 2005, Diaconu won the WBC International Light Heavyweight Title after knocking out Darrin Humphrey (then 21-4). He followed that win up by defeating Max Heyman to take the vacant NABA Light Heavyweight and Transport American Light Heavyweight titles. With the win, Diaconu became the mandatory challenger for then WBC World Champion Chad Dawson. On 19 April 2008, Diaconu won the WBC World Light Heavyweight Interim Championship with a twelve-round unanimous decision over Chris Henry in Bucharest, Romania, the interim title being commissioned to allow Dawson to make an optional defense after a previous injury-produced delay to the mandated bout. In July 2008, Diaconu was elevated to full champion after Dawson vacated the title to avoid having to make the mandatory defense.
