Los Angeles Times, CA
Nov 2 2008
Darchinyan hits the bull’s-eye in win
Armenian boxer stops Mexico’s Mijares in the ninth round to add WBC,
WBA 115-pound titles to his IBF belt.
By Bill Dwyre
November 2, 2008
It’s hard to be a raging bull when you weigh only 115 pounds, but Vic
Darchinyan lived up to the nickname Saturday night.
A 32-year-old Armenian boxer who lives in Australia, Darchinyan took a
30-1-1 record into a fight at the Home Depot Center in Carson that he
was supposed to lose to Mexico’s Cristian Mijares (36-3-2).
On most cards, Darchinyan didn’t even lose a round.
After he had hit Mijares, 27, with about 200 hard lefts, including one
that knocked him down in the first round, Darchinyan chased Mijares
across the ring as the ninth round of the scheduled 12 was about to
end. As Mijares ran backward, Darchinyan chased and caught him with
yet another solid left. Mijares went down, flat on his back. Referee
Lou Moret started to count, then saw Mijares wasn’t stirring much and
waved the fight to an end.
The victory unified three alphabet-soup sanctioning divisions — IBF,
WBC, WBA — the latter two of which had Mijares as champ. So it’s
reasonable to consider Darchinyan the best super flyweight in the
world.
"From the first round, I promised I would fight smart, would destroy
him with the left," he said. "I just thank God it wasn’t like Burgos,
because he took a lot of lefts, too."
In the same ring on March 3, 2007, Darchinyan beat Victor Burgos, a
bout stopped in the final round. Soon, Burgos was taken to the
hospital with brain injuries, and he is still in therapy trying to
recover from that.
Mijares made it to the news conference afterward, cuts under both
eyes, and said, "No excuses. He’s a great champion."
If Darchinyan’s wild attacks weren’t enough for the 3,076 fans who
showed up on a rainy night and left the bulk of the seats in the Home
Depot Center tennis stadium empty, then the semi-main event was.
In that one, 25-year-old Olympian Andre Dirrell, a bronze medalist in
Athens in 2004 with a 16-0 pro record and a great future, ran into
another raging bull, a 167-pound Russian named Victor Oganov. Oganov
is 32, entered with a record of 28-1, all 28 wins by knockout, and
fought in a style best described as a bull in a China closet.
Oganov only moved forward. He took shot after shot and kept coming
forward. In the first round, Dirrell got him up against the ropes and
threw at least 25 uninterrupted hard punches. The flurry ended mostly
because Dirrell’s arms started to go limp. Oganov, more like a brick
building than a person, shrugged and started coming forward again.
Finally, in the sixth round, with Dirrell having won the previous five
on all three judges’ cards, Dirrell got Oganov against the ropes and
staggered him slightly. That was enough for referee Ray Corona, who
stopped the fight.
Oganov, battered and bloody and still wanting more, mouthed a curse
word to Corona several times and the crowd, upholding boxing’s
standards for blood thirst, booed the referee.
Corona said later he had seen Oganov punished enough.
Dwyre is a Times staff writer.
p-boxing2-2008nov02,0,6652560.story