Sometimes breaking the rules pays off

Future opponents should be ready to take in that view of Vic Darchinyan.

There are two golden rules in boxing: Keep your hands up and chin down.

If a young, aspiring boxer wants to work towards a world championship, he is taught to keep his hands on both sides of his head and throw counter punches from that position. But Vic Darchinyan lives in a parallel universe.

The undisputed champion in the super flyweight division continued the hottest streak in all of boxing by dismantling a tough Jorge Arce via 11th round TKO on Saturday night. And he did it his way; hands lows, chin up and just daring his opponent to hit him.

Darchinyan has the most unorthodox stance of any world champion I have seen. His shoulders are hunched over, his lead right hand is below his waist and his powerful left is cocked back ready to fire at any time. It's a recipe for disaster for most fighters, but not Darchinyan who is 32-1-1 with 26 KOs and holds wins over world class fighters such as Arce, Cristian Mijares and Dimitri Kirilov.

The Armenian-Australian showcased why he is one of the top-10 pound-for-pound fighters in the world with his dazzling quickness and lethal left hand. It's not often a man fighting at 115 pounds has a left hand powerful enough to drop middleweight, but Darchinyan certainly does.

The first round was a clinic as Darchinyan poked his head out of his akward stance, causing Arce to swing wildly for a knockout. The "Raging Bull" would then quickly step to his right and deliver a left uppercut right to the chin of Arce. The left uppercut landed all night for Darchinyan but he also showed he was not afraid to use his right hand.

Darchinyan has been criticized for focusing too much on throwing his left and not enough on throwing jabs and short hooks with his right. But on Saturday, he delivered beautiful combinations, mainly a right jab, left uppercut and even a left cross, right hook. Those two combinations, which consistently landed throughout the night, showed just how much Darchinyan has improved within two years.

By the time the second round ended, the champion had been so dominant that I seriously started considering moving him into the top-5 of my personal pound-for-pound rankings — but then round three happened.

Round three was the only round I scored for Arce and it was because Darchinyan got tempted into brawling with hard-hitting Mexican slugger. Arce had some great body shots in the round and Darchinyan later conceded that Arce did hit hard to the body. The third round is proof that even with his recent dominance, Darchinyan has a ways to go before he can be considered one of the top-5 boxers in the world.

The rest of the fight was a great display of speed and power from Darchinyan and also a frightening display of courage from Arce who probably should have thrown in the towel by the eighth or ninth round.

It seemed Arce had a chance to gain some momentum after the third round, but for some reason he kept circling to his right. By circling to his right he was walking right into Darchinyan's powerful left hand. His corner failed him by not instructing him to bail left after jumping inside.

Darchinyan proved when he is focused, he is one of the most dangerous boxers on the planet. After cementing himself as the king in the super flyweight division, he appears to be ready to move up to bantamweight or even junior featherweight.

Matches against Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez could solidify Darchinyan as one of the best boxers of this generation and a move up to featherweight where a challenge such as Chris John would be awaiting could definitely make him a legend.

2009 has already showcased two brilliant boxing clinics put on by Shane Mosley and now Vic Darchinyan. Two more great fights are scheduled for this Saturday with lightweight champion Nate Campbell taking on Ali Funeka and Sergio Martinez squaring off with Kermit Cintron.

The last two years have been a nice comeback for boxing and Darchinyan proved again Saturday why he is one of the fighters spearheading the revival.

Vaseline and plaster

What's under that glove Antonio?

When I think of boxing and mixed martial arts, images of quick counter hooks and beautiful submissions come to mind. But there has been a recent trend the last two weeks in my favorite two sports and I am not too fond of it. 

Instead of counter hooks and submission attempts, I am now left thinking about vaseline and plaster. 

Yes...you read correctly. Unfortunately, the actions Antonio Margarito and Georges St. Pierre have led me to write a whole blog on two substances I never thought I would have to write about.

Margarito had a tremendous fight with Shane Mosley on Jan. 24 (though he was pretty much a punching bag for most of the match), but that fight could have been badly tarnished if Mosley's trainer, Nazim Richardson, did not have the eyes of a hawk. 

Richardson saw Margarito's hand wraps were bigger than normal, so he asked for them to be unwrapped. Once the wraps came off, pieces of hardened plaster fell out. Margarito went into battle without the aid of his plaster-assisted hand wraps and Mosley made him pay. 

Mosley had no problem picking apart the former welterweight champion through nine rounds, and it was because of his speed. It is ironic that Mosley beat Margarito by getting off his punches faster. Imagine how much worse it would have been if the plaster was in Margarito's hand wraps. His punches would have been slower and Mosley probably would have had an even easier time. 

However, the situation is pretty serious and smuggling weapons inside of gloves is a sure way to open up possibilities for serious injury to an opponent. Boxing is dangerous enough, we don't need stunts like Margarito's to make it more violent. 

The California State Athletic Commission rightfully suspended Margarito last Wednesday. I would like to see the Tornado back in action one day, but only after he is ready to fight with nothing but the power of his own punch. 

If Margarito's suspension was not bad enough, the most hyped match in UFC history had some post-fight controversy of its own. Rumors began flying around that Georges St. Pierre had Vaseline applied to his back in between rounds of his demolition of BJ Penn Saturday night. 

This is a little more comical than Margarito's attempt to cheat, but Vaseline on the back of a fighter in a mixed martial arts fight can be a huge advantage. A world-class jujitsu player like Penn would not be able to control his opponent on the ground if he is slippin' and slidin' all over the place.

While there were legitimate concerns in the hours after the fight, the situation has been examined further and even Penn has come out and said that while GSP may have had a minimal amount of grease on his back, it was not enough to affect the fight. 

It turns out, GSP's corner man was putting vaseline on right above the eyebrows, which is perfectly legal, and then did some weird energy channeling exercise that required him to touch GSP's back. There was a minimal amount of grease left on his hand when he touched GSP's back. 

Normally, this would sound like an insane excuse, but since GSP is fighting out of Greg Jackson's camp, I can believe it. Most of those fighters are very superstitious and believe in those spiritual exercises that channel natural energy. Apparently, rubbing GSP's back and right above his nipple simultaneously aligned the energy within his body. 

I don't know if that works, but like I said, I believe that was actually the case. So it is nice to know GSP didn't cheat, but Margarito tried, and that is very unfortunate. 

Hopefully this trend of controversies in main event fights is just a little fad and will not continue throughout the rest of 2009. This weekend's big fight is between Vic Darchinyan and Jorge Arce. Hopefully these two tremendous boxers will leave their plaster, vaseline, sledgehammers and any other sort of foreign object at home. 

2009 is still young, so let's clean up the little mess that has happened and get back to some quality competition.