Bantamweight Joseph "King Kong" Agbeko celebrates a hard-fought victory over Vic Darchinyan Saturday. Despite what Agbeko and promoter Don King intimated after the fight, referee Tommy Kimmons is not a member of Darchinyan's family nor does he get a monthly stipend from the Armenian.This week’s mid-summer thoughts from a strawweight brain…
1. King Darchinyan gets Konged
Even the most hardcore boxing fans were unsure of what was coming from Joseph “King Kong” Agbeko prior to his first headlining fight against former flyweight ruler Vic Darchinyan Saturday night. Although his only loss was a disputed one to Wladamir Sidorenko five years ago, half of his fights had been against fighters with less than five total bouts, most in Africa. And this was Vic Darchinyan, who has demolished everyone he’s stepped into the ring with not named Nonito Donaire. While Doniare is a top ten pound-for-pound fighter, Darchinyan was at least top twenty; with all the hype surrounding Agbeko, how would he look? The answer was nothing short of superb, as he took apart the Armenian over twelve tough rounds; Agbeko actually beat up Darchinyan worse than even Donaire, and had Vic looking like he met a plate glass window at 90 m.p.h. by fight’s end. While Darchinyan landed some good shots, they never seemed to hurt the Ghanaian at all. Considering how Darchinyan recently picked apart the excellent Christian Mijares, Agbeko clearly beat a very dangerous fighter. Agbeko will soon find his way into the pound-for-pound rankings with another win like this one.
While the greatest of all apes has shown to be clearly on the upswing, what to make of Darchinyan now? Although Vic is usually a ridiculous loudmouth prior to any fight he’s in, he did own up to his performance afterward and admit that he had not done enough to win. Most boxing people think coming up in weight hurt him, as Agbeko has been a natural bantamweight his whole career, and Darchinyan’s flyweight power didn’t translate so well at the heavier weight. That may be, but Darchinyan has never shown any ability to adjust within a fight; he just tries to get in and eventually land the huge left. While that has worked in the past, bigger, better fighters won’t fall for that so easily. Darchinyan will need a more complete game if he wants to continue to be a factor at bantamweight or above.
2. Don King lives in a reality different from the rest of us
As tough and foul-filled as the fight between Agbeko and Darchinyan was, only Don King could somehow find a conspiracy against his winning fighter. Oh yes, before the scorecards were even so much as tabulated (and they were a little too close), Captain Hairdo was in the corner telling Agbeko how he had to fight two opponents that night: Darchinyan and referee Tommy Kimmons. Now, granted, Kimmons made a horrible knockdown call in the seventh round after Darchinyan pushed Agbeko to the canvas and grazed the back of his head on the way down, but these things happen in boxing, as well as in all sports. To hear King tell it, Kimmons had $100 large on Darchinyan, and was dead set on a vacation in St. Croix after the fight. Agbeko may be King Kong, but it was monkey-see, monkey-do afterwards, too, as Agbeko kept carping about Kimmons to the press until everyone was sick of hearing it. Sure, Don, like all those fifty cuts on Darchinyan’s face were caused only by punches! One thing we learned from the fight is that both guys like to use their heads, so enough of that talk. Besides, Agbeko’s biggest opponent upcoming might well be King’s ability to bury fighters with inactivity. We’ll see who ultimately wins that battle.
3. The heavyweight division gets interesting? Really?
Just when I start groaning and moaning about the lack of anything exciting in the heavyweight division (oh, like in the last Finito Five, perhaps), Eddie Chambers rises up from the ashes and gives us something to talk about! After the entirely too-heavy Chambers showed up in the 220’s against equally fat Sam Peter in March, a slim, trim 208-pound version stepped into a German ring 10 days ago to face the formidable Alexander Dimitrenko. And this lighter version was entirely too fast for the Klitschko-clone Dimitrenko, who at 6’7”, figured to do to Chambers what we’ve seen in so many Klitschko fights, where the bigger man pummels the smaller one. Chambers, however, has hand speed that many middleweights would kill for, and he thoroughly flummoxed his larger opponent, so much so that Dimitrenko was just trying not to get popped by punches he never saw coming. Now, Chambers had has weight and focus problems before, but if he can get his act together, this could be a preview of what he might do to either Klitschko brother (yes, I said it!). Now, no one’s saying Dimitrenko is a Klitschko, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see what Chambers would do against them? My guess is at the very least, it would be no easy night for Wlad or Vitali.
4. Winning is just for losers
During any fight, fighters are often criticized for not doing enough to win. Some criticisms are realistic, some are not, but most fighters give it their best to try and win. Then there was Antonio DeMarco’s lightweight victory over Benin’s (that’s in Africa, for those who failed geography) Anges Adjaho, where both fighters decided that winning was secondary to looking like a total idiot. DeMarco, who had previously talked about bringing the fight, punishment, Mexican warrior, this and that, had Adjaho seriously hurt at least twice in the fight (after the Mexican did almost nothing in giving away the early rounds) and inexplicably took his foot off the gas each time. This allowed Adjaho to subsequently win rounds, and actually pull ahead in the fight. If that wasn’t bad enough, the African then decided to throw all of that into the trash; as he was rocked a third time and knocked down by DeMarco in round nine, Adjaho decided he’d been hit illegally while he was on the canvas. I guess it didn’t matter to him that referee Tellis Assemenios correctly ruled the punch was prior to Adjaho’s knee touching and started to count the knockdown, Adjaho then turned face down on the canvas and acted like he’d just come down with botchulism. Umm, Anges, the referee was still counting… So when the confused Assemenios reached ten and the fight was over, Adjaho jumped up (he’s healed – praise the Lord!) in protest. What in the world did he think Assemenios was counting for? The number of ring-card girls he’d like to go home with? If the referee is counting, you better get up, whether you agree with it or not; it’s not like he’ll restart the fight for you after some coffee and discussion. So DeMarco got a win he probably didn’t deserve, but Adjaho certainly deserved it less. Yeesh!
5. Two that were taken from us far too early
While the time in and around July 4th is a great time of celebration here in the States, the two weeks since the beginning of the month have not been very celebratory for boxing fans. On the 1st we lost perhaps the greatest featherweight of a generation, Alexis Arguello, apparently by suicide. As if that wasn’t hard enough to deal with, there was Friday’s tragic death of Arturo Gatti, perhaps the greatest warrior of this or any other generation. It has come out since then that Gatti was perhaps murdered by his Brazilian wife while on vacation in the country, adding even more sting to an already grieving boxing public. The hardest part of all this is that all we want to do is remember the great thrills these two gave us. Arguello fought before my time, but his videos of his legendary fights with Aaron Pryor and Alfredo Escalera still show the greatness of “The Explosive Thin Man”, a man who would dominate so many in the division even today. And Gatti, of course, with a warrior’s heart, was almost never in a bad fight; packed with last-minute power and a desire to win despite the odds, he thrilled any fan that was lucky enough to see him fight. His trilogy with Mickey Ward will forever be part of boxing history. Even though these two fighters had retired, they were both great ambassadors to the sport, albeit with demons that they tried so hard to overcome. That may be what made them so dear to boxing fans. They will be sorely, sorely missed.
