By Patrick Kehoe

Bernard Hopkins and James Toney, famous for their pre-fight invectives and all out bad mouthing confessionals have NOTHING on super-flyweight rivals Vic “The Raging Bull” Darchinyan and Jorge “The Entertainer” Arce. Both guys are promising to beat the other into never-never-land, each outing the other as gender challenged in the lead up to their 115lbs. title fight, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

A moody and restless Darchinyan, 31-1-1 (25KOs), doesn’t even want to bother much longer with the division he rules, giving notice of his intended destruction of the colorful Arce, 51-4-1 (39KOs), will be his last divisional slaughter before moving up to full bantamweight and eventually all the way up to Manny Pacquiao. Yes, and he’s almost serious about finding a weight class where he can fight Pacquiao. The Armenian-Australian’s rhetorical flourish of outrageous confidence being so acute, “Traveiso” Arce has to gulp back his laughter. Each thinks the other is in need of either psychological counseling or clinical intervention. Neither fighter has regard for the toughness of the other guy, mainly because they both envision themselves pummeling the other into career oblivion. For both men, winning by a knockout seems the only honorable conclusion.

When Darchinyan says he’ll bust up the all too often cut Arce, Arce merely quips that he loves the sight of his own blood. “My blood pleases me.” We hope that there is something important lost in translation here. Of course, Arce has made a living being outrageous, riding horses up to the ring, daring fighters to hit him as hard as they can, becoming something close to what one might call an actor for the sake of personal aggrandizement. Call him boxing’s over the top showman, complete with soap opera level credentials. There is a lot theatrics no matter what corner you turn toward. They both love the sound of their own voices and the opportunity to astound convention, expectation or tradition.

Arce wants everyone to know that he cannot be intimidated. He’s heard it all before and nothing that “the big mouth” says will have any effect on him. And he expects to be the bigger man in the ring; bantamweights love the chance to play the big guy in title fight. Arce has convinced himself that all Darchinyan really has in his arsenal is his winging hook. Arce, true to character, intends to live or die as a championship fighter, feeling he has the measure of Darchinyan, believing the caricature Darchinyan, sketchy outlines, revealed by Nonito Donaire are all there is to him.

And therein lays the danger for native of Los Mochis, Mexico. Put all of their warring words aside – hit the mute button – and something becomes clear.

Darchinyan does seem like an obstinate fellow; so completely full of his own sense of importance and general effectiveness as a power puncher that that’s about all there is to Darchinyan, as a ring foe. Isn’t it interesting how some fighters add layering to their defenses or improve their offensive abilities and opponents immediately set about working out counter measures? Not so with Vic Darchinyan.

His bravado and surly in-your-face manner creates a sort of blind spot that even astute boxing trainers have not yet fully recognized. The 33 year-old Darchinyan has come a long way from the guy who walked into Nonito Donaire’s accidentally brilliant knockout blow in July 2007. Some of the indicators seem to point to Team Arce having trained for Darchinyan c.2007, the Donaire fight template. Cristian Mijares and his team made the same mistake assessing Darchinyan, as a face first power hitter, who has to take the lead via dangerous aggression and high risk exchanges in order to establish his straight ahead, wide arching power shots.

But Darchinyan has learned how to be aggressive from the opening bell while remaining relaxed behind a probing jab and accurate left cross. It is his improve movement that deconstructed Mijares in their November 2008 Showtime Championship Boxing title unification showdown. The new and certainly improved Darchinyan punches with greater accuracy than he did in his first 30 fights precisely because his distance establishing movement and his ability to keep his body angled and not simply squared up, reading for thrusting combination punching.

Now the Armenian-Aussie seems to work from a defensive readiness, his trusty crablike stance marking out placements, with his punches exploding on target having come in straighter. Everything now Darchinyan constructs flows from his movement, circular where once it was very linear, a simple closing of linear distance to overpower opponents in key spots. The fight against Dimitri Kirilov proved that Darchinyan could angle off his opponents and yet be in position to repeatedly land his big straight left cross down the middle precisely because of improved movement.

Notably, Darchinyan was able to utilize his counter punching speed with his straighter punches and his hard hooks inside when he took logical risks to unload his all out power punches. Suddenly Darchinyan’s power punching looked suspiciously like a boxing-punching style punctuated with strafing power punches, fight turning blows that could come off the counter or at the end of an assaulting combination. For several fights, there has been a perceptible calculation to Darchinyan’s power hitting, founded on movement that was supporting his effectiveness as a fighter, turning defensive readiness into attack boxing.

And since the Kirilov title win, Darchinyan has only improved upon his ability to seamlessly transition from defensive positions into strike ready hitting postures. The hard work of getting Darchinyan to flow into his power instead of launching into bull rushes was co-authored by trainers Angelo Hyder and fellow Armenian Vazgen Badalyan. Badalyan, an Armenian speaker, has helped Darchinyan buy into the project of retooling after the loss to Donaire, fostering an acculturating comfort level in “The Raging Bull’s” training camps; the entire project of getting Darchinyan to a new level of effectiveness masterminded by manager Elias Nasser.

You have to appreciate the levering effects of incremental adjustments to a fighter of world class effectiveness that’d been toppled only to find, within him, the resources of wisdom and maturity, truly believing in transformative alterations, to understand Vic Darchinyan.

Darchinyan, the rambling raver living ‘Down Under’ – almost king of the bantamweights – really does think that Manny Pacquiao, or someone of the great Filipino’s stature, awaits him in a fantasy fight of the decade kind of mega-cash mega-clash for all the right reasons. And he thinks of himself as the right reason. 

Why not dream as big as you talk. What’s the worst that can happen? You make a fool out of yourself while journalists dictate what you are trying to say, as fast as you can say it. From the mouth of declarative, angry fighting men, their words fill up the pages, screens more and more undiluted, unedited, unchecked for accuracy or believability as a matter of routine. And nothing spoken remains binding anyway, let alone measured against future events.

Of course, that’s what it means to talk the talk before and after you manage to walk the walk. Just keep on winning title fights. To cross into entertainment worthiness below welterweight a fighter must make a spectacle out of himself, and then perform amazing feats, making someone believe that the horizon lines of possibility don’t apply to them. Bring on De La Hoya or Manny Pacquiao or whoever the gold calf might be.

Say anything, remain bejeweled and dangerous long enough and who knows who might make you an offer of obscene proportions.

Tell them you’ll fight all the title holders in the next division up, and all on the same night.

Tell them anything to keep the ink spilling, the key registering virtual renderings.

First though, you have to knock out a guy who’s already been a bad man at bantamweight, a mere bantamweight.

Certainly that’s nothing for anyone seeking the impossible.

Not that anything as pertinent as size, experience and reputation bothers Mr. Darchinyan. And that’s exactly what fight fans love or hate about this guy.

Patrick Kehoe maybe reached at pkehoe@telus.net