The Sunday Times (Australia)
September 18, 2011 Sunday
1 – STREETS Edition
Two fists, big heart
by NICK WALSHAW
THERE’S no gold on the old man, which is why he waits.
Quietly sipping vodka from a small glass, while on the other side of
this heaving Armenian restaurant, Vic Darchinyan is continually
swamped by European millionaires they are all in black Armani and
blinding jewellery. In one case, an entire top row of gold teeth. And
loudly, they begin toasting their hero.
Politicians and police. Businessmen and restaurateurs. Even Tata
Simonyan, the Armenian pop star whose record sales are measured by the
million, is in the house.
Properly explaining the wealth now surrounding this table requires a
quick trip across town. Less than 20 minutes to that enormous, white
mansion, which, for reasons best known to the owner, has been
purpose-built to mirror the Las Vegas institution known as Caesar’s
Palace Casino.
That’s right, one of these Armenian boxing fans has created a home of
all classic Roman architecture and rearing stallion statues.
Extravagance right down to the gold-rimmed tumblers inside his
cupboard.
Yet tonight, even Caesar is only one of a crowd. He is patiently
waiting his turn among these men in their diamond Rolexes and Clive
Christian cologne. Glock pistols are on more than one hip.
Cigars, too, are being lit by the Russian billionaire whose own lavish
home, neighbouring that of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, boasts the
ultimate accessory for any Moscow winter a mechanical sun. Which is
why the old man waits in the distance and understands how every
Armenian worth his chest hair will be chasing an audience with this
54kg fighter. A bantamweight who hasn’t just defended his IBO world
title in the country’s first professional boxing event, but afterwards
climbed barechested and bloodied into the stands to dance with
Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan.
Darchinyan, you see, is the undisputed superstar here in this country
of his birth. He is a national hero whose dressing room is guarded by
armed militia. Whose walkouts are shadowed by secret service. Who
right now cheers as grown men skoll $1500 cognac, the type once
favoured by no less than Winston Churchill, straight from the bottle.
If you reckon Anthony Mundine can pull a crowd Down Under, consider
that tonight in a country of more than 3 million people, 90 per cent
of all television sets have been tuned into Darchinyan’s 12 rounds
against South Africa’s Evans Mbamba.
“And because there’s no professional boxing association, they don’t
even have real commentators,” says close friend and manager Elias
Nassar, laughing. “It’s just a couple of locals yelling `bravo Vic,
bravo’ every time he punches.”
And so less than 15 minutes later, an ageing crooner, all sharp
threads and jet black hair, takes to the stage with his band;
launching immediately into a rockin’ Armenian classic, where the only
words discernible to this hack are the repeated cries of
Daaaar-chin-yaaaaaarn.
“Basically, they’re talking about climbing Mt Ararat,” says Olga
Darchinyan, who like her husband speaks Armenian, Russian and English.
“They’re explaining how Vic can do anything. How the whole country is
behind him.”
Over and over tonight it continues this way. Armenians singing his
name. Toasting his triumphs.
Enamoured by this man whose fists are so internationally acclaimed
that NBA star LeBron James once asked to play a few hands of poker
“alongside my favourite fighter” in Las Vegas.
Yet amid all the chaos and cognac, all the toasting and Tata hits,
there is one inescapable fact that catches you . . . Vakhtang
Darchinyan is a proud Aussie.
You first noticed it a few hours earlier, when, in his dressing room
only minutes out from the historic bout with Mbamba, Darchinyan
desperately searched for that Australian flag he always carries to the
ring.
At first, no flag could be found. It led someone within the camp to
quietly suggest that with Armenians having paid up to $4000 for this
homecoming, maybe it wasn’t the best arena for flying a Southern Cross
anyway. At which the boxer stopped, lifted his head, then replied:
“Brother, if that flag doesn’t go to the ring, I don’t go into the
ring.”
Indeed, in Darchinyan you have a man who dedicated his Yhonny Perez
fight, in part, to the Anzacs. Someone, who despite being given more
than $1 million in prime Yerevan real estate by the government,
prefers to continue paying off his Concord home. Who now has paused
celebrations to demand Frank Hadley, Gary Dean and the rest of the
Australian Boxing Commission be brought immediately to the Cherry
Blossom restaurant so they, too, can eat from these 20 tables covered
in breads, cold meat and unfinishable piles of barbecue.
This is important for the Super Flyweight of the Decade.
Speaking later with Nassar, you learn that Darchinyan demanded that
more than $100,000 be spent on flights, accommodation and transfers
for these seven Australian officials he now seeks out. A fair effort
when you consider that for a hundred bucks he could have brought the
entire Georgian Boxing Commission across the border by taxi.
“But Vic’s Australian,” Nassar says. “So is every member of this
team. Yes, we have backgrounds in Armenia, Lebanon, Greece, but when
we travel the world, it’s done as a group of proud Aussies.”
And still Darchinyan knows that back home in Australia there will
always be those who can’t quite accept him. Those who point to the
Armenian colours topping his trunks, to those unmistakable European
looks and rough, broken English as some kind of proof the fighter is
somehow less Australian than the rest of us. Even Ring magazine lists
him as Armenian.
Why tonight has Darchinyan been so determined to bring an Australian
flavour to proceedings; he even insisted on walking out to that
unmistakable boom of our leading ring announcer, Mark Warren?
“Australia’s my country,” the fighter says simply, his confused look
making you want to immediately re-phrase the question. “It is where
my son was born. Where I became boxing champion of the world. Yes, I
grew up in Armenia.
“But Australia . . . it’s where I choose to live.”
Darchinyan has had offers to live everywhere. Which is also why he
shelled out $1 million to make this latest fight. Why he spent three
months so glued to his mobile during preparations, it would eventually
hamper the way he fought inside Karen Demirchyan Sports Complex.
“But just as Australians are proud of me, so the people of Armenia
are proud,” Darchinyan continues. “Even when I moved to Australia
after the Sydney Olympics, they’re still proud. That’s why I have this
fight here. I never want Armenians to think I’ve forgotten them.”
It’s a loyalty that exists in everything Darchinyan does.
Like the fact he flew Angelo Hyder, his Australian trainer, halfway
around the world for this fight, only to have Vazgen Badalyan, his
original trainer and now chief of police, employed as lead cornerman.
Or that top American promoter Gary Shaw, after 13 years in undoubtedly
the most cut-throat sporting business on the planet, says Darchinyan
is the only fighter he represents without a contract.
“But you have to understand how loyal this guy is,” Shaw says. “Say
a brawl breaks out in this bar right now and, of all the fighters I’ve
ever represented, I can call only one to help me out. Man, it’s Vic
Darchinyan every time.”
Loyalty, humility, respect. These are what Darchinyan has built his empire.
It’s why the old man with no gold has waited so long to speak with
him. Why now, around 4am, with the businessmen having moved to a
downstairs bar, he finally approaches and, in Armenian, asks not only
to toast the champ, but that someone may translate for the small crew
of Aussies gathered around him.
This is a story he wants everyone to know. A yarn taking place only a
few years back when his daughter, still only a young girl, was
involved in a terrible car accident right on the streets of Yerevan.
No seatbelt, the interpreter says. Broken back.
Remember, this is not the man who calls Caesers Palace home. Nor the
Russian billionaire, who bought a sun to warm himself.
No, this is the old man with no gold; which also made him a father
with no answers.
A man who suddenly had no way to help his little girl. No money for
the operations or the medications required – not just in the following
days and weeks, but for the rest of her life. Then the cheques started
to come in.
They arrived on a regular basis from Australia, because, even though
he hardly knew Vakhtang Darchinyan, someone else did. “So tonight, we
drink,” says the man, lifting his glass. “Not to Vic Darchinyan as
boxing champ but to Vic Darchinyan as a man.”
From: A. Papazian