There are a lot of ways you can describe Vic Darchinyan, who challenges IBF bantamweight titlist Joseph Agbeko this Saturday night on Showtime (9 pm, ET/PT). Inside the ring he is a malevolent force who hunts and stalks his prey with the cold-blooded ruthlessness of a hired assassin. Many believe he’s just a salty little bastard who simply has no real regard for his opponents.
But there’s one thing you can’t say about ‘the Raging Bull’ – that he’s disloyal to those around him. In a bottom line business where allegiances aren’t as good as the paper they are signed on, Darchinyan is a man of his word – and beyond.
As he was preparing for this weekend’s assignment in Sunrise, Florida, a press release came out a couple of weeks ago from Team Darchinyan, stating their life-long commitment to promoter Gary Shaw. It was a rather odd announcement, the timing of it all, especially. But as the sharks circled, Darchinyan wanted to make things crystal clear.
“There was a semi-promoter who went to Australia and was trying to talk to Vic and a couple of guys that are with Team Darchinyan and they rebuffed their advances and Vic has been in Las Vegas training and there was some talk that this was Vic’s last fight with Gary Shaw,” the promoter explained to Maxboxing. “So he wanted to make it ultimately clear, as Elias (Nasser) did, that we are together for life. Till he ends his boxing career, we are a team.”
Darchinyan says this team reminds him of the ’79 Pittsburgh Pirates.
“We’ve been together for four years and every time we get closer and closer and closer, like family. I think he’s great. Everything we do, we decide together, we check, negotiating with opponent. My manager, Gary Shaw, they work together. It’s great.”
When asked about his lifetime pact, Darchinyan states, “I asked about that because Shane Mosley was in Australia, we met him, we talked, he said I was a great fighter and I heard in the news that they wanted to sign me out. They wanted to talk to me. It never happened, that’s what they wanted to do. But with Gary, I’m in a good relationship. I’m not looking to sign with anyone. I’m like, ‘This is the best that can happen to me.’ At the moment and in the future to great fights, I’m not looking at the moment to sign with anyone.
“We’re looking to sign for life.”
And the reason why they have made this pledge to Shaw is very simple – the man has come through on his promises.
“Gary, his professionalism, first and foremost,” said Nasser, who manages Darchinyan. “Everything that I’ve asked of Gary Shaw, he’s delivered 100-percent, every single thing that I’ve asked for, and Gary’s always taken it on himself to make himself the frontman, to absorb all the B.S. and innuendo that goes in on the world of boxing and there’s not a lot of people that know that every single fight Vic’s taken, I’ve personally asked for. So Gary’s always given us advice.
“After Vic lost to Donaire, Team Darchinyan, which is composed of Vic, myself and James Paris, who’s the strength and conditioning trainer and they’re the best of friends, he was being managed by Kostya Tszyu’s manager, who did a couple of wrong things by Vic personally, it had nothing to do with money. It was just based on principle. That’s when I decided to get involved with Vic. And Gary, the whole time, since that day, the loss to Donaire, everything else being put aside with contracts, having agreements in principle, it’s always been a gentlemen’s agreement.”
Shaw was opposed to Darchinyan facing the hot Cristian Mijares last fall. But upon the insistence of his fighter’s management, he made the fight and Darchinyan would promptly blow through Mijares in unifying the jr. bantamweight division.
If you’ve been in this business long enough, someone will have left you. That’s just the nature of the beast. But this most uncommon of gestures did not surprise Shaw.
“No,” he claimed, “I wasn’t surprised because Vic and Elias, and the rest of the people that hang with them, are extremely loyal. When we fought Z Gorres in the Philippines, we ate every meal together. They were downstairs, they wouldn’t eat till I came down. They would call my room and say, ‘You gotta come down, it’s breakfast,’ I’d say, ‘Nah, I’ll meet you for lunch.’ ‘No, we’re not eating till you get here.’ It became this way and the same thing when he fought Mijares. Same thing when he fought Arce. We were together all the time, 24/7.
“It’s just an unbelievable feeling, an unbelievable feeling of loyalty and there’s genuine feeling of likability. Meaning, you feel the love – I know it sounds like a dumb expression – but you feel the love. I feel Team Darchinyan.
“Others show you warmth, but if someone comes with $100, they’re gone.”
But one of the age-old axioms is to never fall in love with a fighter. Eventually, one way or the other, they will break your heart. Shaw, who is definitely a hugger and kisser, has been down this road before. Most notably with Jeff Lacy, who he once thought of as part of his family. A couple of years ago they had an acrimonious split.
“Yeah, but I am who I am,” pleaded Shaw earlier this week, as he makes no attempt to deny the emotion he feels towards certain fighters. “And no matter what, I’m never going to stop being who I am. So I can say I’ve been hurt, I can say I’m never doing that again, tell my family I’m not doing that again, I’m not going to expose myself – I am who I am. My success is because of who I am. So I probably won’t change. And Jeff Lacy has called me within the last three days, talking to me about representing him in the Roy Jones fight.”
Darchinyan says he couldn’t imagine fighting without Shaw: “It’s very hard, I don’t want to be with any other promotion, I have a good promoter. I just want to concentrate on my training, that’s what happening with me. That’s why I’m improving from each fight, because my mind is only on my opponent.”
Unlike many other contemporary fighters, he just wants to fight. Imagine that.
“I don’t want to be involved in management, in promotion,” Darchinyan explains. “I just want to think about my fight.” He recalls the first time he came in contact with the gregarious Shaw, “I met him in the U.S. across from Mexico, same time I met with the son of Bob Arum (Todd duBoef) with Top Rank. I have contracts with both of them in front of me, I was deciding who I was going to sign up with. I talked to Gary personally. We had a good time, we talked.”
Nasser, in describing the business of boxing, uses words like, “despicable” and “cut-throat”, but with Shaw, he has a partner for life.
“I’m very loyal to people who treat me right. As for Gary, things are already being put into place where in the future, we’re already setting up a management company,” said Nasser. “We’re going to have fighters from Russia, fighters from the Eastern Bloc countries, fighters from Australia that are coming through Vic and myself and we just chose to have that association.
“Gary Shaw is the number one promoter in boxing.”
It wouldn’t stun anyone to find out that they spend every night together in their hotel room, holding hands and singing Kumbaya or Sister Sledge. But in all seriousness, this unit is tight. As hard as it is to believe, there may be, in fact, loyalty in boxing.
“He’s who I needed to be next to me and he can do best for me,” said Darchinyan. “I can do best for him.”
RECONCILIATION?
So will Shaw and Lacy be boxing’s version of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton?
“Well, I have mixed feelings,” said Shaw. “I had a little talk with Jeff and I told him how badly he hurt me, ‘You didn’t hurt me as a fighter, you hurt me like a son. You were in my house, you lived with one of my sons and whatever’. He says he knows, he understands. I told him I wanted him to know I never robbed him of a penny. He said he knows and understands. He said, ‘Let’s just bury the hatchet and move forward.'”
REMATCH?
A return bout between Darchinyan and Donaire – the only man to ever defeat him – would be one of the most anticipated in the sport. But in the past, Shaw has made it clear that he does not reward disloyalty (as Donaire left Shaw’s promotional umbrella last year for Top Rank) and he had made it very clear that Darchinyan-Donaire II wouldn’t be a reality.
“I haven’t changed my stance but I want to tell you – and I don’t want to say I lied yesterday and today I’m telling the truth – here’s the thing: Vic is not afraid of Nonito Donaire, Vic would fight Nonito Donaire, July 12th, one day after Agbeko,” stated Shaw. “But since the fight with Donaire, Vic has really moved into the limelight. We never stayed still. We’ve given interviews with the press, he fights Z Gorres, he fought Mijares and he fought Arce – all on TV, with a lot of press behind him and everybody is excited.
“Since Nonito Donaire knocked out Vic, he’s disappeared and I don’t take anything away from Bob Arum, I think he’s a great promoter and I think Bruce Trampler is a great matchmaker. However, you look at all the interviews that Bob Arum gives when he’s talking about all his young fighters, he never mentions him. He mentions Korobov, the Russian, he mentions Lopez, the kid from Puerto Rico. But he doesn’t talk about Nonito Donaire and what a great fight it would be and if we can only get Shaw to get Darchinyan in the ring, it would be great and whatever.
“So the only people that care about Donaire are a couple of reporters. It’s not a big fight.”
Well, that’s not entirely true, Arum has based his new pay-per-view series, ‘Pinoy Power’ around Donaire and he will be headlining another show in mid-August. But while ‘the Flash’ has performed exclusively on smaller, independent pay-per-view shows, Darchinyan has starred on Showtime, a much larger platform.
In the past, as litigation lingered, Arum and Shaw made it clear that they would not do business together. But that is no longer the case.
“Absolutely, there’s no lawsuits between us, we’ve spoken. I speak to Todd (duBoef), we did Kendall Holt and Tim Bradley without a hiccup,” said Shaw. “So I have no problems working with Bob at all. As a matter of fact, I enjoy it. Our last promotions together, Arce and Holt, were a breeze. Not one hiccup. But you’ve got to make fights – that’s what makes the big fights.”
FRIDAY FLURRIES
Showtime has announced a Monday afternoon presser at Madison Square Garden. Folks, this much-talked about super middleweight round-robin/tournament is on….I saw ‘The Hammer’ with Adam Carolla, and I have to say, I really enjoyed this quirky comedy about an underachieving amateur boxer (played by Carrola) who tries to make the Olympic team….Pedro Martinez to the Phils? Does he have one more run left in him?….Hey, didn’t Fox Sports Net announce at the beginning of the year that they would be televising one major international championship fight a month? What happened to that? Outside of Froch-Pascal, I haven’t seen another one……I hear James Toney is in pretty good shape according to those who have seen him recently. What took him so long?….Tweet me at Twitter.com/stevemaxboxing…..
