By Cliff Rold (photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank)

This weekend features two significant fights within three pounds of each other.  Both will have significant impact on the top ten standings in their divisions.

Both could have a significant impact on how two of the four combatants are viewed when their careers are behind them.

Omar Narvaez (28-0-1, 17 KO) is the WBO Flyweight champion.  Fourteen title defenses and almost seven years since winning his belt, his career still doesn’t add up to his numbers.  He’s lacked the sort of real challenge which takes a fighter beyond a belt.  Saturday night, he faces what could end up being one of his stiffest challenges in American Rayonta Whitfield (22-0, 11 KO).

Jorge Arce (51-4-1, 39 KO) was once the lineal Jr. Flyweight Champion of the World, posting seven defenses of the crown before he was done.  This Saturday marks a showdown with arguably (and only arguable because Fernando Montiel isn’t officially gone) the best Jr. Bantamweight in the world, Vic Darchinyan. 

In between, Arce has had his ups and downs.  Moving up four pounds to 112 (or Flyweight), Arce sort of added another WBC title in a bizarre situation where he attained interim titlist status for over a year but was never forced to fight regular titlist Ponsaklek Wonjongkam.  Three more pounds, two WBC eliminators, and it was Arce facing off with a then unknown titlist in Cristian Mijares.

It didn’t go well.

He’ll need it to go much better this weekend. 

Narvaez will need to keep the status quo.

Both need big wins to make statements that they are more than just their numbers.

In a piece for this site in September of 2008, this author noted about Narvaez’s supposed ‘tie’ of legendary fellow Argentine Middleweight Carlos Monzon’s defense total that Narvaez has “beaten some good fighters since capturing the WBO belt in 2002 with a seventh round stoppage of Adonis Rivas…What he has not done is pay the full price of admission to share in the sort of history Monzon occupies.” 

Through likely little fault of his own, and due in large part to the heavy regionalization of the smaller weight classes, Narvaez has had few opportunities for the things which could earn him comparisons with a legend.  He hasn’t had any unification bouts or much global exposure outside of a few title defenses in Europe.      

He won’t have those this weekend either.

The 33-year old Narvaez will though have something he hasn’t seen much of lately.  In Whitfield, he’ll have a younger (27), undefeated, and athletically talented stylist who will come to win.  If Whitfield can prove truly belonging of the world class level at Flyweight, he’ll provide Narvaez a proving grounds of his own as his career nears the inevitable downside of the aging curve.

It is not to say Narvaez has never faced a good fighter.  Men like Andrea Sarritzu, Carlos Tamara, Bernard Inom and even the relatively disappointing, but still talented, current WBA Jr. Flyweight titlist Brahim Asloum, are not slouches.  They also haven’t been the sort of competition which forces one to sit up and pay attention.  Surrounding those fights have been too many challengers who look like record padding.

Padding has been a bigger problem for Arce.  Despite his popularity and ticket selling ability, Arce has been as carefully matched a star fighter as one can find in recent years.  His challenge of Darchinyan (31-1-1, 25 KO) might represent the toughest fight he’s been placed in, intentionally, in almost a decade. 

It was July 1999 when Arce almost successfully ended the career of future Hall of Famer Michael Carbajal.  The bout indeed turned out to be Carbajal’s last but it was the rare grand exit.  Well behind in an exciting affair, Carbajal found a last piece of his old magic and got Arce out of there in round eleven. 

Since that fateful night, Arce has gone to mark 32 times and many of his bouts have had fans out of their seats.  He’s got the sort of style to command the reaction.  Arce could fight a broomstick and find a way to bleed. 

As is the case with Narvaez, it is not to say there have not been some good wins.  His wresting of the Jr. Flyweight crown from Yosam Choi in 2002 was a career best feat and performance.  Respectable wins against the likes of Juanito Ruibillar and Hussein Hussein were tacked on as well.

There were even more recognizable names like Rosendo Alvarez, Hawk Makepula and Medgoen Singsurat.  The problem was they all were just names by the time Arce got to them, each well past the sell by date of long careers.  There isn’t much need to delve into not one but two fights against a well past it Adonis Rivas.

It’s why the Mijares fight seems still like an accident, an expected win against a soft punching pocket fighter whose style could have been expected to make Arce look good if only Mijares had not been so much better than expected himself.

For all his titles and wins, Arce’s is still a resume in search of ultimate validation.  Darchinyan, a serious favorite this weekend, provides him a chance.  Well regarded since his own reign as IBF Flyweight champion, Darchinyan is riding a new peak in his career.  Three solid performances in 2008 were capped by a decimation of Mijares which may well have garnered him a place one day in the Hall of Fame.

In victory, Darchinyan became the first man ever to hold three major titles at 115 lbs. (WBC, WBA, and IBF) and displayed speed and power in disciplined form.  Many assume he’ll show them off again as Arce comes forward, face first, for the wars he craves.  If Arce can prove the skeptics wrong, he’ll find at center ring a proving ground not only for a night but for a lifetime of sacrifice entered into professionally over thirteen years ago as a sixteen year old boy.

Similarly, Narvaez will have a chance to further his stature as well.  Turning back the slick Whitfield while giving up six years could do no less than elevate his status and allow him a new case as more than just another beltholder at Flyweight.  From the comforts of fighting in his home nation, Narvaez’s fight won’t immediately be seen in the U.S. but its result will certainly be heard and results laced in praise will be solid ground indeed. 

The Weekly Ledger

But wait, there’s more, from numbers to a trip down (recent) memory lane:

Cliff’s Notes…

Why does the world keep reading from some that Darchinyan-Gorres was somehow a negative for Darchinyan?  The fight’s easily available on multiple You Tube like sites for myth dispelling…If you’re not watching HBO’s Big Love, you’re missing some sheer awesome and a worthy heir to some of HBO’s best programming…So it’s looking like Jermain Taylor-Carl Froch after all and it’s reason to be excited.  This could be a delightful war…Too bad about Alfredo Angulo-Ricardo Mayorga falling out but it’s probably for the best.  Mayorga has been knocked out badly three times since 2004 and Angulo won’t be doing him any favors…While Amir Khan-Marco Antonio Barrera could be fascinating theatre, what happened to the man who squished Khan?  Where is a high profile fight for Breidis Prescott?  He’ll be back in February but he should have a rocket on his back after the Khan win.

Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com