By Dan Ambrose: Giving away an incredible 10 inches in reach and three inches in height, 40-year-old former two-division world champion Vic Darchinyan (42-9-1, 31 KOs) suffered a 2nd round knockout last Saturday night against Mexican journeyman sub Sergio Frias (18-6-2, 9 KOs) on the undercard of the Deontay Wilder vs. Chris Arreola card at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
The 5’8” Frias flattened the 5’5” Darchinyan in the 2nd with a right hand to the head. The shot sent Darchinyan down on his back on the canvas. The referee Keith Hughes almost immediately stopped the fight when he saw how hurt Darchinynan was. The official time of the stoppage was at 2:14 of the round.
For Darchinyan, this was his fourth loss in his last seven fights. Of those losses, three of them have come by knockout but against world class fighters. Frias, 25, is not a world class fighter and likely never will be. He’s just a guy that was brought in as a last minute replacement opponent for Darchinyan. This was supposed to have been a fight that Darchinynan would win. In other words, it was a confidence booster type mismatch.
Darchinyan had been knocked out in the 8th round by WBA World featherweight champion Jesus Guellar last year in June 2015. Since that time, Darchinyan had moved back down to the super bantamweight division and won his last two fights against weak opposition. In choosing to fight Fras, Darchinyan fought someone a little too good. Frias came into the fight with three losses in his last five fights. His losses came against Manuel Avila, Ronny Rios and Emmanuel Dominguez.
“It was the first time that I’ve been knocked out in my 25 years of boxing. He just caught me. I think it was a counter right hand. I know I threw a punch and he just caught me. I can’t believe that happened,” said Darchinyan via fight news.
Darchinyan squared himself up as he was coming forward, and this made it easy for the taller Frias to nail him with a big right hand. Frias isn’t a big puncher, but he didn’t need to be for him to hurt the smaller Darchinyan.
Darchinyan has never been the same fighter since moving up in weight out of the super flyweight division seven years ago. Since moving to bantamweight, Darchinyan has had mixed results. He’s subsequently made his problems worse by moving to super bantamweight and even featherweight. The money is obviously better in those divisions, but Darchinyan does not have the size or the youth to compete in those weight classes.