Darchinyan blasts Arce to maintain Super Flyweight Supremacy

In response to the prefight bantering from Jorge Arce, Vic Darchinyan promised a decisive beatdown of his Mexican adversary.  He delivered precisely that, pounding the game Arce from pillar to post en route to an 11th round TKO victory on Saturday night in Anaheim, CA.  With the victory, Darchinyan defended his IBF, WBC and WBA super flyweight titles and moved up the rankings for the mythical ‘pound for pound’ championship.

Darchinyan dominated the fight throughout, but Arce proved a tough challenger as he repeatedly stood up to the Aussie’s wilting barrage of punches.  Arce showed considerable courage as he kept coming forward and standing in front of the champion looking for a big shot, only to be counterpunched to death all night long.  Nevertheless, Arce kept coming and only after suffering several cuts which led the ringside physician to eventually stop the fight was he vanquished despite Darchinyan’s bell to bell superiority.

In one of those moments that underscores why professional fighting exists on a plane above ‘stick and ball sports’, Arce questioned the stoppage despite being a bloody mess and barely able to stand:

“I don’t know why the doctor stopped the fight in the last round, a fighter always has a chance to win. He cut me with his elbow, not a punch.”

Ultimately, however, he gave the champion his props:

“Darchinyan is a great fighter. A very good fighter.”

Arce also appeared to struggle at times with his opponent’s southpaw stance, which made Darchinyan’s counterpunching assault all the easier.  For his part, the victorious Australian fighter praised his opponent’s courage and strength of will:

“He hurt me with some good punches but I always came back. He proved to me he was tough and a good fighter.”

All three judges had Darchinyan up by identical 109-100 scores at the time of the stoppage.