Misha Aloyan Debuts on April 22 Against Highly Rated Jimenez

By Alexey Sukachev

An ambitious debut is a clear trend for the last several years in prizefighting. Beibut Shumenov, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Kazuto Ioka, and surely Vasyl Lomachenko and Naoya Inoue – all got their title shots within nine fights or less. They were widely successful, winning big in single digits and setting the path for their followers.

One fighter, driven by a dream and an opportunity, is former amateur star Misha Aloyan, originally from Armenian, but now living and fighting of Novosibirsk, Russia.

As reported by TASS media agency, on April 22 Aloyan will enter the ring in Yaroslavl, Russia, against a world-rated fighter in Dominican Norberto Jimenez. It’ll be Aloyan’s first fight as a pro. The event will be promoted by the Patriot promotional group.

Jimenez, 26, started his career with four consecutive losses in 2010, drowned further to 1-7 in 2011, and was just 2-8-1 by May 2011. But he's been undefeated ever since.

Jimenez had been an obscure figure, considering by many to be another fighter with a hugely padded record - until he proved a number of experts wrong by getting a draw with reigning WBA super flyweight champion Kohei Kono on the eve of 2015 in the champion’s backyard in Japan.

Jimenez came back to the Dominican Republic after that and scored six more wins, four inside the scheduled distance, the biggest victory being the sixth-round stoppage of overaged former IBF champion Felix Machado, who was 44 at the time. WBA #4 and WBC #9 Jimenez is now 26-8-4, with 14 KOs, and he is rated #8 by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board.

An ethnic Yazidi, Misha Aloyan, 28-years-old, entered the world stage in 2008 by winning World Boxing Cup, held in Moscow Russia. Over years, he was a dominant flyweight, winning two world championships (2011 and 2013) and European championship in 2010.

He is also a two-time Olympic medalist, getting a bronze medal in London 2012, and a silver medal in Rio 2016. He was later stripped of his most recent accolades on a controversial drug offensive. As an amateur, Aloyan scored wins over Rau’shee Warren, Andrew Selby and Khalid Yafai among others.