CRISTIAN MIJARES vs VIC DARCHINYAN

Showtime keeps on turning out the good fights. Last Friday it was the classic cliff-hanger between Librado Andrade and Lucian Bute, while on Saturday there is a tremendous all-southpaw match between 115-pound champions when Mexico’s Cristian Mijares takes on Aussie-Armenian Vic Darchinyan in the Los Angeles suburbs.

Fights in the lighter weight divisions don’t get much better than this. I have been an admirer of Mijares for some time now, while Darchinyan has consistently given exciting performances — including the night he got knocked out by Nonito Donaire.

It seemed for a while that the Donaire KO defeat might have left its mark on Darchinyan. He wasn’t impressive against a limited Filipino named Federico Catubay, when he threw a lot of wild punches before winning in the last round. Then, in the Philippines, Darchinyan suffered a heavy knockdown before coming back to battle his way to a controversial draw with fellow-southpaw Z Gorres.

In his last fight, though, Darchinyan was back to his very best when he overpowered Dimitri Kirilov in five rounds to win the IBF belt.

Mijares, meanwhile, is a superb technician who has not been beaten in six years. Holder of the WBC and WBA titles, Mijares has lately been punching with increased power, having stopped three of his last five opponents.

His finest performance came when he outclassed Jorge Arce in a result that surprised a lot of people (me included) while in May he was once again masterful when he outsmarted the dangerous Alexander Munoz to win the WBA title.

At 27, Mijares seems to be at his peak — and he is five years younger than Darchinyan. I would consider Mijares a solid favourite in this fight.

That being said, I have the sense that Darchinyan is going to be a dangerous opponent for Mijares.

As usual we are getting a lot of colourful comments from Darchinyan but I thought it was significant when he commented: “On Saturday, you’re going to see a different Vic Darchinyan. I won’t try to take him out with just one punch. You’re going to see a much smarter Vic on Saturday night.”

This suggests to me that Darchinyan is going to be moving forward in a controlled manner and not just going out and trying to make every punch a winner, which is perhaps what led to him getting knocked out by Donaire.

I have the strong sense that Darchinyan had little respect for Donaire, thinking he just could just walk right through the boyish-looking Filipino, and he paid for his arrogance.

Darchinyan knows that he is meeting a superb craftsman in Mijares and yet he says that this is the fight he wanted more than any other, in effect telling his promoter, Gary Shaw, to pull out all the stops to make the fight happen. Mijares, though, says that Darchinyan will be “surprised at what I will do with him”.

The stage seems set for a boxer versus fighter match, with Mijares bringing the artistry, Darchinyan the aggression. I think, though, that there is quite a bit of the fighter in Mijares, while Darchinyan, despite an awkward style, has better boxing ability than he is given credit for possessing. No, Darchinyan doesn’t look classy, but, when he puts his mind to it, he can be quite artful in the way that he gets under punches and manoeuvres his way into punching range so that he can unleash his heavy blows. I fail to see how someone with Darchinyan’s amateur pedigree (he boxed in the Olympics and world and European championships and beat Cuban world champion Manuel Mantilla) can be dismissed as a crude brawler.

So, I think we might well see a bit more fighting from Mijares and a little more caginess from Darchinyan than we might be expecting.

Mijares has the greater skill in the conventional sense, but he is a fighter who can get hit. He was heavily knocked down in his first bout with Katsushige Kawashima in Japan and he got nailed by quite a lot of left hands from Jose Navarro in their all-southpaw thriller (the fight where one judge incredibly had Mijares losing every round in surely the most aberrant assessment of a boxing match in ring history).

Each fight is different, but if Darchinyan can hit Mijares as often as Navarro did, he must have a great chance, because the Sydney-based fighter can certainly crack.

I believe that Darchinyan is going to have to walk through punishment to a certain extent as he stalks Mijares, but I also think that he is well capable of hurting the Mexican fighter if (or should it be when?) he lands his own punches.

Despite the great respect I have for Mijares, I am going to go against the tide here and pick Darchinyan to pull off the upset. I think he will be able to land enough of his thumping left hands to slow down Mijares and then come on with a late charge to snatch a decision victory.