fightnews.com
March 6 2010
Fightwriter: Darchinyan returns
By Graham Houston
In his last appearance Vic Darchinyan easily demolished Mexico’s Tomas
Rojas in two rounds. So far, no Mexican fighter has been able to stand
up to the powerful Aussie-Armenian. Darchinyan bludgeoned Cristian
Mijares, busted up Jorge Arce and overpowered contenders Victor Burgos
and Luis Maldonado.
On Saturday, with TV coverage on Showtime, it is the turn of Rodrigo
Guerrero to see if he can reverse the tide and score the greatest
victory of his life, and one that would surely delight the fans in Old
Mexico.
Guerrero faces a massive task, of course. He has had just 15 bouts,
with his one loss coming by majority decision. His finest win came in
July 2008, when he won a split 12-round decision over the tough,
busy-punching Juan Alberto Rosas. Now Guerrero goes in with not simply
a two-weight world champion at 115 pounds but perhaps one of the most
powerful hitters in the history of the lighter weight classes (say,
flyweight to bantamweight).
I have to admit I thought that Rojas, a tall, quick, rangy southpaw,
had the seasoning and style to upset the odds against Darchinyan.
Oops, I got that one a bit wrong. After enjoying success in the
opening round, Rojas started to drop his hands and taunt Darchinyan in
the second. Next thing you knew, there was Rojas down and out,
courtesy of a big left hand from Darchinyan’s southpaw stance.
Darchinyan is not the sort of fighter with whom an opponent can play
games. Just one mistake can mean lights out.
Guerrero surely knows he cannot take an foolish chances in the manner
of Rojas.
The challenger is little known, even to hard-core fight fans, but
sometimes a young, ambitious Mexican fighter can prove to be far
better than his record suggests.
Guerrero talked a confident fight this week, telling Showtime that he
can fight and that he has power. `I know a lot of people may not have
heard of me, but I guarantee I am not here to fall down in the first
or 12th round ‘ or any round, for that matter,’ Guerrero said. `People
and fans who have never seen me fight are saying I’m no good. I
believe they are all in for a surprise, a really big surprise.’
I haven’t seen Guerrero so I don’t know what to expect from him. It
seems that he is a southpaw switch-hitter, meaning that he boxes from
both the orthodox and `lefty’ stances.
If Darchinyan isn’t fully motivated for this routine type of fight,
then Guerrero might have a chance to land punches and score points, at
least for a while, but the gulf in experience and punching power looks
too wide for this to be a truly competitive contest. It seems
inevitable that at some stage in the proceedings Darchinyan will catch
and hurt Guerrero, and get him out of the fight. The oddsmakers have
set an over/under of 6.5 rounds. This looks right to me. If Guerrero
doesn’t get crunched quickly he might have the heart and fighting
spirit to go into the second half of the fight. I’m thinking that
Darchinyan stops his man around the sixth or seventh round but without
having seen Guerrero this is just a guess. It could go longer or
shorter, but at the end of the fight I will be shocked if it is not
Darchinyan who has his hand raised.