DARCHINYAN VS. ARCE – NOT JUST A WAR OF WORDS
By Patrick Kehoe
BoxingScene.com
Feb 6 2009
AR
Bernard Hopkins and James Toney, famous for their pre-fight invectives
and all out bad mouthing confessionals have NOTHING on super-flyweight
rivals Vic "The Raging Bull" Darchinyan and Jorge "The Entertainer"
Arce. Both guys are promising to beat the other into never-never-land,
each outing the other as gender challenged in the lead up to their
115lbs. title fight, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
A moody and restless Darchinyan, 31-1-1 (25KOs), doesn’t even want to
bother much longer with the division he rules, giving notice of his
intended destruction of the colorful Arce, 51-4-1 (39KOs), will be
his last divisional slaughter before moving up to full bantamweight
and eventually all the way up to Manny Pacquiao. Yes, and he’s almost
serious about finding a weight class where he can fight Pacquiao. The
Armenian-Australian’s rhetorical flourish of outrageous confidence
being so acute, "Traveiso" Arce has to gulp back his laughter. Each
thinks the other is in need of either psychological counseling or
clinical intervention. Neither fighter has regard for the toughness of
the other guy, mainly because they both envision themselves pummeling
the other into career oblivion. For both men, winning by a knockout
seems the only honorable conclusion.
When Darchinyan says he’ll bust up the all too often cut Arce,
Arce merely quips that he loves the sight of his own blood. "My
blood pleases me." We hope that there is something important lost in
translation here. Of course, Arce has made a living being outrageous,
riding horses up to the ring, daring fighters to hit him as hard as
they can, becoming something close to what one might call an actor for
the sake of personal aggrandizement. Call him boxing’s over the top
showman, complete with soap opera level credentials. There is a lot
theatrics no matter what corner you turn toward. They both love the
sound of their own voices and the opportunity to astound convention,
expectation or tradition.
Arce wants everyone to know that he cannot be intimidated. He’s
heard it all before and nothing that "the big mouth" says will have
any effect on him. And he expects to be the bigger man in the ring;
bantamweights love the chance to play the big guy in title fight. Arce
has convinced himself that all Darchinyan really has in his arsenal
is his winging hook. Arce, true to character, intends to live or die
as a championship fighter, feeling he has the measure of Darchinyan,
believing the caricature Darchinyan, sketchy outlines, revealed by
Nonito Donaire are all there is to him.
And therein lays the danger for native of Los Mochis, Mexico. Put all
of their warring words aside – hit the mute button – and something
becomes clear.
Darchinyan does seem like an obstinate fellow; so completely full
of his own sense of importance and general effectiveness as a power
puncher that that’s about all there is to Darchinyan, as a ring
foe. Isn’t it interesting how some fighters add layering to their
defenses or improve their offensive abilities and opponents immediately
set about working out counter measures? Not so with Vic Darchinyan.
His bravado and surly in-your-face manner creates a sort of blind spot
that even astute boxing trainers have not yet fully recognized. The
33 year-old Darchinyan has come a long way from the guy who walked
into Nonito Donaire’s accidentally brilliant knockout blow in July
2007. Some of the indicators seem to point to Team Arce having trained
for Darchinyan c.2007, the Donaire fight template. Cristian Mijares
and his team made the same mistake assessing Darchinyan, as a face
first power hitter, who has to take the lead via dangerous aggression
and high risk exchanges in order to establish his straight ahead,
wide arching power shots.
But Darchinyan has learned how to be aggressive from the opening
bell while remaining relaxed behind a probing jab and accurate left
cross. It is his improve movement that deconstructed Mijares in
their November 2008 Showtime Championship Boxing title unification
showdown. The new and certainly improved Darchinyan punches with
greater accuracy than he did in his first 30 fights precisely because
his distance establishing movement and his ability to keep his body
angled and not simply squared up, reading for thrusting combination
punching.
Now the Armenian-Aussie seems to work from a defensive readiness,
his trusty crablike stance marking out placements, with his punches
exploding on target having come in straighter. Everything now
Darchinyan constructs flows from his movement, circular where once
it was very linear, a simple closing of linear distance to overpower
opponents in key spots. The fight against Dimitri Kirilov proved that
Darchinyan could angle off his opponents and yet be in position to
repeatedly land his big straight left cross down the middle precisely
because of improved movement.
Notably, Darchinyan was able to utilize his counter punching speed with
his straighter punches and his hard hooks inside when he took logical
risks to unload his all out power punches. Suddenly Darchinyan’s power
punching looked suspiciously like a boxing-punching style punctuated
with strafing power punches, fight turning blows that could come off
the counter or at the end of an assaulting combination. For several
fights, there has been a perceptible calculation to Darchinyan’s power
hitting, founded on movement that was supporting his effectiveness
as a fighter, turning defensive readiness into attack boxing.
And since the Kirilov title win, Darchinyan has only improved upon
his ability to seamlessly transition from defensive positions into
strike ready hitting postures. The hard work of getting Darchinyan
to flow into his power instead of launching into bull rushes was
co-authored by trainers Angelo Hyder and fellow Armenian Vazgen
Badalyan. Badalyan, an Armenian speaker, has helped Darchinyan buy
into the project of retooling after the loss to Donaire, fostering an
acculturating comfort level in "The Raging Bull’s" training camps; the
entire project of getting Darchinyan to a new level of effectiveness
masterminded by manager Elias Nasser.
You have to appreciate the levering effects of incremental adjustments
to a fighter of world class effectiveness that’d been toppled only
to find, within him, the resources of wisdom and maturity, truly
believing in transformative alterations, to understand Vic Darchinyan.
Darchinyan, the rambling raver living ‘Down Under’ – almost king of
the bantamweights – really does think that Manny Pacquiao, or someone
of the great Filipino’s stature, awaits him in a fantasy fight of the
decade kind of mega-cash mega-clash for all the right reasons. And
he thinks of himself as the right reason.
Why not dream as big as you talk. What’s the worst that can
happen? You make a fool out of yourself while journalists dictate
what you are trying to say, as fast as you can say it. From the mouth
of declarative, angry fighting men, their words fill up the pages,
screens more and more undiluted, unedited, unchecked for accuracy
or believability as a matter of routine. And nothing spoken remains
binding anyway, let alone measured against future events.
Of course, that’s what it means to talk the talk before and after you
manage to walk the walk. Just keep on winning title fights. To cross
into entertainment worthiness below welterweight a fighter must make
a spectacle out of himself, and then perform amazing feats, making
someone believe that the horizon lines of possibility don’t apply to
them. Bring on De La Hoya or Manny Pacquiao or whoever the gold calf
might be.
Say anything, remain bejeweled and dangerous long enough and who
knows who might make you an offer of obscene proportions.
Tell them you’ll fight all the title holders in the next division up,
and all on the same night.
Tell them anything to keep the ink spilling, the key registering
virtual renderings.
First though, you have to knock out a guy who’s already been a bad
man at bantamweight, a mere bantamweight.
Certainly that’s nothing for anyone seeking the impossible.
Not that anything as pertinent as size, experience and reputation
bothers Mr. Darchinyan. And that’s exactly what fight fans love or
hate about this guy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
