VIC DARCHINYAN KO9 CRISTIAN MIJARES

Sold short by many as just a crude slugger, Vic Darchinyan showed he can box a smart fight, too, as he outboxed as well as outfought Cristian Mijares before flattening his opponent with a huge left hand in Saturday night’s 115-pound unification match on Showtime.

The underdog in the betting, Darchinyan surprisingly dominated what had looked like being a competitive fight.

Afterwards he expressed disappointment that most writers had picked against him. I wasn’t one of them, but I must confess I never thought that Darchinyan would make the fight look almost easy.

The Australian-Armenian had promised he would show his boxing ability in this fight, and this he did. He seemed not just stronger than Mijares but savvier: he controlled the contest.

Mijares’s right jab was often matched by that of Darchinyan in the all-southpaw fight. Darchinyan, not Mijares, turned out to be the more adept counter puncher. These facets of the fight were not generally expected.

It didn’t help Mijares, of course, that he got dropped heavily by a left uppercut late in the opening round (and was perhaps a bit fortunate that the bell rang soon after the eight count had been completed). The Mexican boxer had picked himself off the floor to win against Katsushige Kawashima in Japan, but it was a different story against the powerful and confident Darchinyan, who simply had all the answers.

Mijares was game, and he kept trying, but it seemed that every time he had a bit of a rally going he would get hammered to body and head as Darchinyan blasted back. Still, the finish in round nine was a bit of a surprise. Although he had lost almost every round, Mijares was still defiantly throwing punches and seemed to have weathered a battering earlier in the ninth. But Darchinyan came on again, pushed the Mexican fighter back with a heavy right jab and then smashed home the head-jerking straight left hand that crumpled Mijares to the canvas. There was no way that Mijares was going to get up from that punch — not inside 10 seconds anyway — and referee Dr. Lou Moret, realising this, waved the finish at the three-minute mark of the round.

Many might be wondering what went so badly wrong for Mijares, why the normally competent and composed Mexican fighter couldn’t get anything going. I think the answer is partly that Darchinyan, with his upper-body movement and the way he waves his gloves around in strange pawing motions, gets an opponent guessing where the next punch is coming from, which induces a certain indecision on the part of the other man. Then, when Darchinyan does punch, the blow often comes from a totally unexpected direction. He might look as if he is about to throw a straight left, only to whip an uppercut through the middle, for instance. At other times he will unleash a series of punches, thrown fast and hard.

You can throw in the fact that Darchinyan isn’t easy to hit cleanly with his awkward, crab-like style.

Worst of all for the opposing fighter, Darchinyan flat out hurts people when he hits them.

Putting it all together, then, Darchinyan can make you miss, hit you with punches you aren’t expecting and hurt you with his shots. Realising all of this, it is easier to understand why a classically skilled boxer such as Mijares, who could be considered superior in the textbook sense, would have a bad night against Darchinyan, whose style isn’t elegant but is certainly effective when combined with his concussive punching power.

I never bought into the prevailing view that Darchinyan was simply a brawler who relied entirely on power. A boxer who competes on the top international level as an amateur and who beats a Cuban ace, as Darchinyan did, must be able to box a little bit. Darchinyan knew he had boxing ability, and I think it's fair to say that in this fight he proved it.