Vic Darchinyan, a boxer who threw as many insults before the fight as he did lethal punches during it, saved the final insult for last Saturday night.
After months of calling his super flyweight opponent slow and dumb and a fraud, as well as sparring with a female and declaring her a better puncher, Darchinyan completed things by beating up the guy.
The mouth that roared finished popular Mexican Jorge Arce, much like he said he would, in their 115-pound boxing title match at the Honda Center. It ended with Darchinyan, the Armenian who lives in Australia, way ahead on all cards and Arce sitting in his corner, bleeding badly from both eyes but set to give it one more round.
Then ringside doctor Paul Wallace took a long look at the cuts around Arce's eyes and waved the end to the proceedings.
Good call by the good doctor. A final round would have been like an extra episode of "M*A*S*H*." More blood for entertainment purposes only.
Even the highly partisan Mexican crowd, increasingly quiet as the battle went on, knew that enough was enough. Of the 5,450 who showed up in person for the fight that was televised on a delayed basis later on Showtime, about 5,000 made enough pre-fight noise to make it clear that Mexico is a lot close to Anaheim than Armenia or Australia.
They booed every sighting of Darchinyan and booed him all the way down the aisle of his entrance.
Then he quickly shut them up with a wild-swinging start that left Arce battered and cut early and became merely a prelude to more of the same.
When the TKO was called after the 11th, each of the three judges had Darchinyan ahead, 10 rounds to one.
Darchinyan, 33, who retained his three titles in three divisions and increased his record to 32-1-1 with his 26th knockout, is fast becoming an attraction, even though he weighs about the same as Andrew Bynum's injured leg and is fighting in a division that is not traditionally of much marquee value.
Part of that is his pre-fight act, which crosses the line, even for boxing. Among the quotes Darchinyan dished out in some of the pre-fight hype sessions was the classic: "Mexico has a lot of great fighters, but he's not one of them."
And, on this night, the veteran Arce, now 51-5-1 and only 29 years old, was clearly not.
He had countered Darchinyan's blabber with his own attempts.
"Darchinyan's greatest strength is his mouth," Arce said, among other things.
