Darchinyan joins lucrative fight club

Vic Darchinyan has smashed his way into boxing's million dollar fight club.

The Sydney-based brawler's world-title unification demolition of Mexican glamour boy
Cristian Mijares in Los Angeles on Sunday has two of America's big-paying TV
networks, ESPN and Showtime, clamouring to broadcast his next fight.
They see him as a marketing dream.
Inside the ring Darchinyan is a knockout specialist providing all-action bouts and
outside he is equally vicious, generating plenty of headlines by trash-talking his
opponents.
Darchinyan, after a late night of celebrations at an LA restaurant with 200 friends
and family, says he will return to the ring in March with a super fight organised by
his American promoter, Gary Shaw, and Australian manager, Elias Nasser.
His criteria for opponents is simple.
Darchinyan wants to stock his trophy cabinet with as many world-title belts he can
get his powerful hands on and is willing to climb to higher weight divisions.
"I will only fight champions," Darchinyan told AAP.
"If they have a belt I want them."
Darchinyan's ninth round knockout of Mijares gave him ownership of the World Boxing
Council, World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation super
fly-weight belts, but defending the titles against mandatory defences is not his
priority.
Money and belts are.
"Every fight from here on is going to be a very big payday," Nasser, who spoke with
Showtime and ESPN executives after the bout, said.
"We're in seven figures a fight now."
The only major belt in the super fly-weight division Darchinyan does not own is the
World Boxing Organisation title and he said he was keen to take on WBO champ,
Mexican Fernando Montiel.
After crushing Mijares, Darchinyan stood in the ring and called out boxing's biggest
payday, Oscar De La Hoya, whose opponents earn up to $US15 million ($A22.3 million)
to show up in the ring.
Nasser said another fighter Darchinyan was keen to fight was an equally prolific
trash-talker, Mexico's Jorge Arce, who has dodged Darchinyan for years.
"I want to rest until the end of the year and from January I'll go back to my gym
and start training," Darchinyan said.
"My manager will start working on the next fight this week.
"I only want to fight for the world title.
"I don't want to defend.
"If any world champion wants to fight me, I am ready."
Stepping up several weight divisions is not a deterrent to Darchinyan because the
only sparring partners willing to work with him are larger fighters, including
Australian welterweight Lovemore N'Dou.
"Vic knocks out all of the sparring partners near his weight class so he's used to
sparring the bigger guys like Lovemore," Nasser said.
Darchinyan is scheduled to arrive back in Sydney on Wednesday morning.