By Jim Dower: In perhaps a fitting end to what has been a disappointing bantamweight tournament put on by Showtime, former two division world champion Vic Darchinyan (36-3-1, 27 KO’s) defeated Colombian Yonnhy Perez (20-2-1, 14 KO’s) by a 5th round technical decision after a hard head clash opened up a cut on the forehead of the 32-year-old Perez on Saturday night at the Nokia Theater, in Los Angeles, California. The cut, which opened up an artery and couldn’t be stopped with manual pressure, led to the ringside doctor halting the bout at 1:07 of the 5th. The fight then went to the scorecards, where Darchinyan won by the judges’ scores of 50-44, 50-44 and 50-44.

It was an entertaining fight with Darchinyan knocking Perez down once in the 2nd from a big left uppercut and hurting him multiple times with hard left hands in each round. Darchinyan, 35, who had unsuccessfully tinkered with changing his once all out brawling style by mixing in more boxing, opted to go back to his slugging style and it worked for him as he never left Perez have a chance in the fight by jumping on him early and hurting almost immediately in the opening round with a hard left hand to the head.

Darchinyan would continue to throw pretty much nothing but left hands for the remainder of the bout. Darchinyan was winded a lot of the times because of his high workrate and looked vulnerable to getting hit. However, Perez was often fighting hurt from the big shots that he was constantly getting hit with and in no position to mount any kind of sustained attack. The strange thing about Darchinyan was that even when he looked to be completely exhausted and punched out, he was able to come back with huge shots that surprised Perez and hurt him.

As far as entertainment goes, this was the best fight of the tournament by far. Darchinyan fought much better in this fight than he did in his recent loss to Abner Mares in December. The only problem with this fight is the quick ending. It would have been much more interesting to see if Darchinyan could have finished Perez off. It was incredible to see how much punishment Perez could take and keep fighting. Who knows whether Perez would have come back and possibly beaten a tired Darchinyan in the 2nd half of the fight or if Darchinyan could have taken Perez out. The fast ending robbed fans of seeing what could have happened had the fight gone into the 2nd half.