By Thomas Gerbasi
At the age of 34, tradition dictates that professional boxers start to settle down, content in the knowledge that their experience and skill sets still have enough clout to let them perform at a high level without getting involved in matters better saved for the young and brash, such as feuds and trash talking.
These are things that can not only give you gray hair, but add to your stress level in a sport that already delivers unhealthy amounts of stress.
Then there’s Vic Darchinyan, nary a gray hair to be found on his head. And despite his advanced age (at least for a 115-pound prizefighter) and enough world championship hardware to make any 30-something content, “The Raging Bull” is, well, still raging.
Yet it’s not his opponent at the Agua Caliente Casino this Saturday night, Rodrigo Guerrero (13-1-1), who has the WBC / WBA super flyweight champion firing on all cylinders. In fact, Darchinyan appears to have a healthy respect for his unheralded challenger. Instead, the pride of Sydney, Australia by way of Vanadzor, Armenia has saved his ire for the man who issued him his first professional loss back in 2007, Nonito Donaire.
And to think it all started with a simple question asking how he was able to come back from a knockout defeat to win multiple world titles.
“The first time I lost against Nonito Donaire, I believe it was my mistake,” Darchinyan told BoxingScene. “Yes, he was hitting me with the same punch, the left hook, but I knew I was going to knock him out, so I wasn’t putting any attention on it. I think if they gave me a couple more seconds (after I was knocked down), I would recover and show them that I could punch harder and knock him out.”
Donaire’s finishing left hook was the shot heard ‘round the boxing world, winning The Ring magazine’s Knockout and Upset of the Year award for 2007, and in the time it took to read that sentence was all it took for Darchinyan to pick up the story and run with it.
“After that, you know what happened?” he asks. “The guy (Donaire) never came back, he never wanted to fight me anymore, and I don’t know how they could put him pound for pound in the top ten. He never fought any world champion, he never did anything. I started not to believe in this pound for pound anymore. I came back, I beat world champions, won against three champions in a row – all by knockout – (Dmitry) Kirilov, (Cristian) Mijares, and (Jorge) Arce. But they put him in the pound for pound list and its all bulls**t because the guy don’t want to fight me anymore. It doesn’t matter – he’s knows what’s gonna happen to him. I made him who he is now, and when I fight him, I’m gonna break him – he’s gonna be nothing. He’s gonna be retired after the fight. This is the last chance, after this fight, to see if he’s gonna take my fight. If not, I’m moving up and I’m gonna forget about him. He’s nothing.”
It’s obvious that Donaire is far from ‘nothing’ to Darchinyan, whose competitive spirit refuses to let him believe that he can be beaten by anything other than his own mistake. Some may call that arrogance; I call it confidence, the kind that world-class athletes use to separate themselves from the pack, something Darchinyan did from the first time he laced up the gloves at the age of eight.
As an amateur, he compiled a reported 158-18 record that included an impressive 105 knockouts. After representing Armenia in the 2000 Olympics, he relocated to Australia and turned pro in November of that year. Four years later, he was a world flyweight champion who held the belt until the shocking loss to Donaire.
Undeterred, Darchinyan bounced back, eventually taking out the championship trio of Kirilov, Mijares, and Arce to take three of the four major belts at 115 pounds. A challenge of bantamweight boss Joseph Agbeko in July of last year fell short (“I was without patience,” he says of the bout. “I was gonna knock him out and go for one big punch. I forgot about skills, I just wanted to knock him out because he upset me at the press conference.”), but he moved back to 115 pounds last December with a second round knockout of Tomas Rojas, leading him to this weekend’s Showtime headliner against Guerrero, who at 13-1 (9 KOs) is certainly on the light side when it comes to world-class experience. But Darchinyan is not looking past his foe, because he knows what that attitude has gotten him in the past.
“Sometimes when I go to fight, I say ‘he’s not good enough for me, I’ll knock him out in the first round,’” he admits. “But this time I think it’s gonna be better for me. I don’t have to rush, I’ll take my time, get used to his style, and then if the time comes for a knockout, I will knock him out. Everyone coming to see the fight, I want to give them what they paid for – I want to show them excitement. That’s my point, and when I go into the ring I have to give them one hundred percent and show people what they’re waiting for.”
And if his actions leading up to the fight have been any indication, he is taking Saturday’s bout very seriously. He decided to get acclimated to the United States’ current weather in Las Vegas, not in Los Angeles, where his friends among the large Armenian population can become a welcome sight, but also a distraction.
“I have too many friends here, I can’t concentrate on my training,” says Darchinyan of California. “My friends are also arriving from Armenia, maybe 15-20 people, and it’s very hard for me when I come to America and train in LA. In LA, it’s impossible to concentrate on your training. You have to be focused on your training, you have to lose weight, and it’s very hard. They always bring you something to eat, and it’s gonna be too hard.”
He laughs, injecting an ounce of levity into what is otherwise another intense day in the life of Vic Darchinyan. But it’s that intensity that has not only made him a fan favorite here and in Australia and Armenia, but that is keeping a 34-year old body chugging along in a young man’s sport. And he takes his cues from another couple ‘old’ guys.
“All my opponents are younger than me, but none of them are more powerful than me in the ring,” he says. “And if I need my skills, I can show them that I have more skills than anyone. In boxing, when you feel you’re already old, then you’re gonna get old. But when you believe you’re young, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Guys like (Bernard) Hopkins, Shane Mosley, when they go into the ring, they’re young in the heart, and that’s what boxing’s about. You have to believe you’re young. My opponent is 22 years old, but you will see that I’m gonna be faster than him, more powerful than him, and much better than him, because I believe I’m gonna be.”
So, even though I’m tempting fate here, does he believe a rematch with Donaire will happen?
“Everyone is saying ‘why does he (Donaire) have to fight me?’” says Darchinyan. “I have two titles. If he thinks he’s better than me and I’m an easy fight for him, come collect two belts. And his purse is gonna be a big time more than what they pay him now. So what is your point? Now you don’t want to fight me? Because he’s scared. He knows he can’t beat. He knows it was a miracle for him (the first time). I don’t want to give him anymore attention. He don’t deserve it. He’s just chicken, he just talks.”
This “Raging Bull” likes to talk a bit himself, but at the same time, he’s willing to put it all on the line in the ring to back it up. And the scary part is that he may still have room to grow as a fighter.
“I’m now 34 years old,” he muses. “I’m 26 years in boxing and I think I know this sport more than anyone, but I am still learning every day. And that’s the point; if you say ‘I know everything, I don’t want to learn’, it’s time for retirement. I’m still learning and I’m still enjoying my fights in the ring. I’m very young in the heart. And people are gonna see that I’m gonna come back stronger and stronger.”
