Yahoo! Sports boxing analyst Kevin Iole's latest focuses on the Darchinyan-Arce fight from the other night, and his feeling that fights as one-sided as that one should be stopped sooner due to the fact that getting hit in the head a lot can lead to problems down the line.
It's insensitive to disagree, but I think it's too much to generalize every "one-sided," "all but over" fight as one that should be stopped sooner. Darchinyan was giving Arce a schooling, but really didn't beat him up all that badly. If you want to argue that it WAS too bad, that's your opinion, but I think going by "punishment taken" is kind of a weird grey area, too.
What about a great, back-and-forth war like the Vazquez-Marquez fights or Gatti-Ward or Barrera-Morales? Do those fights, because they're competitive, become less dangerous to the fighter's health? In every one of their fights, both Vazquez and Marquez took way more brutal punishment than Arce did the other night.
It's a tough discussion, and referee Dr. Lou Moret has been criticized by some for not being able to keep up with the fight, but I think he did OK for the most part. Fighter safety is very important, but the harsh truth is nobody walks away from a productive boxing career in great shape, and that's just kind of how it is. Arce has been beaten around far worse in fights he's won than he was against Darchinyan.
If you start painting with too broad a brush, you're gong to have some really bad decisions. That's my only concern.
I think this was the most interesting thing Iole covered, though, which is Bob Arum being upset with the Arce corner:
“I wasn’t concerned about [the number of punches] he was taking, though I will admit he clearly lost the fight,” Arum said of Arce. “He doesn’t know how to fight a left-hander. Someone has to teach him. He didn’t do [well] with [Cristian] Mijares, and he didn’t do it here.
“He’s a gutty guy, and considering he has no clue how to fight a left-hander, I think he did well to stay in there. … I talked to them about it before the fight, and they told me they were teaching him and this and that. But he was moving the wrong way. It’s basic boxing. Give him a training camp with someone like Freddie Roach, who I think is the best trainer, and it’s a different fighter.”