Vic Darchinyan promised he was going to throw bombs tonight against Yonnhy Perez, that he would go back to his "old" style, before he started trying to apparently "box too much."
Let tonight be a lesson: When Vic Darchinyan makes a promise, believe it.
Darchinyan (36-3-1, 27 KO) dominated and frequently hurt a flat-looking Perez tonight at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, knocking the Colombian down in the second round and bewildering him with constant activity and huge left hand shots. In the fifth round, the two fighters' heads came together, opening up a bad cut on Perez's eye. Immediately, Perez (20-2-1, 14 KO) looked to call the fight off, not wanting to continue, and the cut was taken to the ringside physician, who stopped the fight quickly.
The fight went to the cards, where Darchinyan scored a clean sweep, 50-44 across the board. Bad Left Hook scored it 49-44, giving Perez a close third round and scoring the second round 10-7 with the knockdown, as it was a totally dominant round for Darchinyan.
Now, look, it was not a good cut. A lot of blood was coming out. But at the same time, that's why you employ a cut man -- to work on and stop a cut like that one. Maybe Perez's cut man could have, or maybe he couldn't have, but ideally you give him a chance. However you want to take this, go ahead: Perez wanted out, and got his wish.
Perez just did not look good tonight. Maybe watching tapes of Darchinyan would have helped. Maybe training somewhere with better sparring would have helped; not that many sparring partners can replicate Darchinyan's ultra unorthodox style, but Perez just looked totally unprepared for the exact fight that Darchinyan very vocally promised to deliver.
Perez really only had moments in the third round, which I gave him close. Darchinyan was zeroed in and looking for the knockout tonight. The only "bad" thing you can say about how Darchinyan fought tonight was that being so aggressive and throwing so many punches did seem to have him noticeably tiring by the fourth round. Maybe, you might argue, he got a bit lucky that the fight ended before he found himself gassed out and open for a Perez comeback. But that would be assuming that Perez, who was eating constant leather and taking some hard body shots designed to blow his tires, would have been able to do that anyway.
It's impossible to not call a five-round technical decision a letdown, but Darchinyan gave us plenty to enjoy tonight. This was his most ferocious performance in a long time, and definitely did remind me of the flyweight destroyer that he once was. He's going to have tough nights with the top bantamweights, but the truth is, they're going to have tough nights with him, too, as he's shown already against Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko, though he lost those fights.
At 35, the old Armenian slugger is still launching weapons of mass destruction. And tonight, he got back in the race at 118 pounds.