Explosive action seems certain in the 115-pound title fight between Vic Darchinyan and Jorge Arce on Saturday. These are champions who like to press forward and land big punches. The crowd in the Los Angeles suburbs and viewers watching on Showtime are likely to see a fight that could be among the greatest in the lighter weight divisions in recent memory, maybe one that can even be compared with the spectacular war in Las Vegas when Michael Carbajal survived two knockdowns to knock out Chiquita Gonzalez.

Darchinyan, the Aussie-Armenian southpaw, starts favourite. After all, he demolished Arce conqueror Cristian Mijares. I would never count out Arce, though. The gritty crowd-pleaser from Los Mochis is one of those fighters who will never admit defeat. He will keep trying to land his heavy left hooks and uppercuts to body and head, and if he can get through he can hurt Darchinyan, who was knocked out by Nonito Donaire in his only defeat and suffered a knockdown in a drawn fight in the Philippines against Z Gorres.

It is hard to go against Darchinyan, though. He actually seems to be an improved fighter at 33. Certainly he never looked better than in his last two fights, when he knocked out Dimitri Kirilov and Mijares.

Neither of these fighters had the firepower to threaten Darchinyan, though. Arce is a dangerous proposition although he has taken a lot of punches in a blood-and-guts career and is generally thought to be wearing out a little at the age of 29.

Arce has had some great moments, and my lasting memory of him will be the night he suffered a cut across the bridge of the nose, pleaded with the doctor not to stop the fight, and attacked furiously to stop Hussein Hussein in 10 blood-spattered rounds.

The signs are there, though, that Arce is coming to the end of a career that has provided stirring entertainment over the years. He had a surprisingly close struggle against the Thai southpaw, Devid Lookmahanak, and he was losing to Tomas Rojas, another left-hander, before crumpling his fellow-Mexican with a brutal left hook to the body in the sixth.

Last September, Arce had to survive a wobbly fourth round when he walked onto a left hook from the young, much less-experienced Panamanian, Rafael Concepcion. He came back to overpower Concepcion in nine rounds, but for a moment Arce’s legs looked awfully unsteady.

Darchinyan, although the older man, might actually be the fresher of the two fighters because he hasn’t been in as many attrition-type fights.

It might not mean a lot, but Darchinyan has been challenging Arce for a long time now, and fighters have told me that sometimes they simply know that they have the beating of a particular boxer. I think that Darchinyan feels that way about Arce.

While both men are known for driving forward and seeking to bully their opponents, I think that Darchinyan has more boxing ability than he is given credit for possessing. No one is ever going to outgame Arce, but Darchinyan could outsmart him somewhat.

Arce’s physical strength has been a great asset to him and in many fights he has been just too strong for the other man. Darchinyan, though, has always been an exceptionally strong fighter for someone in the 112-pound, 115-pound weight classes. Years ago there were stories of him more than holding his own with much bigger men, including middleweights, in the gym in Sydney. In a head-on collision, like armoured vehicles colliding on a track with room for only one, I think that Darchinyan might be one of the few fighters who can actually match Arce’s strength and maybe even push him back.

I make this a much more even fight than many of my colleagues in the boxing trade, but I feel that Darchinyan is going to be the winner. I make him the better fighter, the one with more variety, and he will, I think, be able to hit Arce with hard, clean shots more often than Arce is able to hit him with the hooks.

This is sure to be edge-of-the seat stuff for as long as it lasts, but I think that Darchinyan is going to gain the upper hand around about the fifth round I am expecting him to stop a defiant-to-the-last Arce somewhere around the ninth.