By Alexey Sukachev (at ringside)

Situated not far from the Third Ring Road of Moscow, YotaSpace nightclub and concert hall welcomed a rare type of event yesterday – prizefighting.

Promoted by Aram Davtyan and his Punch Boxing Promotions, and bannered “Fight for the Future”, this tourney – as all of Davtyan’s installments – featured the best of local Armenian fight scene. It has also once again indicated that ethnic Armenians are getting more and more involved into the Russian fight scene.

In the main event, Vage Saruhanyan (13-1-1, 2 KOs) showed both his strengths and weaknesses against Filipino Jheritz Chavez (5-1-2, 3 KOs) with a wide unanimous decision for Chavez’s WBC Eurasia Pacific Boxing Council lightweight title.

Saruhanyan, 25, who has been boxing in the States during the initial part of his career (going 6-0-1 NC, with 2 KOs), is a talented stylist, quick and blessed with a sound technical ability.

All of his best qualities were on display in the first part of a ten-rounder. The Armenian moved smoothly, using angles to endanger the native of Las Pinas, Philippines. Saruhanyan’s jab was in Chavez’s face all the time, and it was well felt by the titleholder. The challenger’s superiority was stamped with a flash knockdown, scored by him at the end of round one, when Chavez – obviously off-balance – went down after a body jab.

Saruhanyan’s continued to do harm to Chavez during the next rounds. The Filipino looked too slow and he struggled mightily with finding a proper range to create danger zones for his opponent. As soon as he was ready to unload, Vage used upper body movement to smother Chavez’s power shots and also leaned out of his fire range, forcing the Filipino to miss on constant basis. Vage didn’t only move laterally, he also stood his ground when needed and still dealt more damage to Chavez than vice versa.

However, lack of hitting power and inability to rock Chavez were precursors for a lengthy night. As rounds went by, Saruhanyan’s advantage was slowly being replaced with run-first tactics, where notable activities were reduced to almost a zero number. Chavez, his face reddened after numerous eaten jabs, was annoyed and frustrated but Saruhanyan, supported by local aficionados, continued with his hit&run approach. The running part was getting bigger with each fought round resulting in a very dismal performance.

At the end, all three judges had it widely for Saruhanyan: 100-89, 100-89, and 99-91, but with this victory he will hardly find any new fans. Chavez had nothing to be proud of but his initial unwillingness to congratulate his foe was at least understandable.

Undercard

Ironically, an entire fight card (except for the main event) lasted less in total than the featured fight of the tourney.

Former IBO title challenger Aik “The Humanoid” Shakhnazaryan (17-2, 8 KOs) continued his restoration after two back-to-back losses in 2015 with an impressive first-round kayo of Ugandan import Solomon Bogere (13-4-2, 10 KOs). Shakhnazaryan, 22, was painfully dominating, before he landed a picturesque left hook to knock Bogere out cold. The Ugandan was down and hurt for several minutes. Shakhnazaryan has previously lost to Abner Lopez in his stateside debut and then to Eduard Troyanovskiy, a future IBF light welterweight champion.

Light welterweight Manvel Sargsyan (11-0, 7 KOs) scored his fifth consecutive stoppage win by dismantling Ugandan Charles Mulindwa (10-2-1, 3 KOs) in two rounds. Mulindwa, who was fighting for the first time out of native Africa, has never been down but he was rocked several times and all over the place when a mercy stoppage came by referee Andrey Kurnyavka at 1:20 of the second round, when Mulindwa was hapless at the ropes.

Heavyweight/cruiserweight Maxim Maslov (17-1-1, 10 KOs) got his first win in almost a year, stopping Georgian import Paata Aduashvili (20-12-2, 13 KOs). Aduashvili was down twice before the stoppage at 2:00 of the very first round.

In a battle of unbeatens, Egyptian Ahmed Mustafa (4-1, 1 KOs) was sent down three times by exciting Armenian youngster Zhora Hamazaryan (5-0, 4 KOs), aged only 19, prompting a stoppage at 2:18 of the round.

Other results:

Yuri Trogiyanov (3-1, 2 KOs) TKO 2 Oleksiy Murashkin (2-3-1, 1 KO)

He Su Khan (2-0, 1 KO) TKO 1 Dinars Skripkins (2-8-2)

Islam Dumanov (1-0, 1 KO) TKO 2 Artem Lim (0-1)