Contrary to a report that he would soon be signing with Golden Boy Promotions, promoter Gary Shaw announced that undisputed jr. bantamweight champion Vic Darchinyan will instead be extending his relationship with Gary Shaw Productions. "It's a beautiful friendship and I look forward to working with them on developing more talent from Australia, Armenia and Russia for many years to come," stated Shaw in a recent press release. In fact, Shaw now contends that he's open to the idea of a rematch between Darchinyan and his only conqueror, Nonito Donaire.
Already a two-division champion, Darchinyan (32-1, 26 KOs) will be moving up in weight to challenge IBF bantamweight champion Joseph Agbeko (26-1, 22 KOs) on July 11th. His lone loss came at the hands of IBF flyweight champion Nonito Donaire. A heavy underdog in that bout, Donaire shocked the world by knocking out Darchinyan in the fifth round. Since then, a lot of fans have been clamoring for a rematch between the two. "I would love to fight him," stated Darchinyan after his last bout, an eleventh round stoppage of Jorge Arce. "Not a chance," promoter Gary Shaw would immediately interject. "You don't reward disloyal people and boxers...I can give him Montiel, I can give him Vasquez," he continued as he alluded to a bitter split between he and Donaire, who he used to promote, making it clear that a rematch would not be happening any time soon.
Despite the comments, Shaw disputes the allegations that he's preventing a rematch between Donaire and Darchinyan from happening. "I have no problem making such a rematch but who will buy it, who will pay the freight? If someone called from the Philippines and said, hey, we've got $2 million for Darchinyan, we'd go there in a heartbeat. Vic and I love the Philippines and the great boxing fans in that country," Shaw stated in a recent interview with Michael Marley. "If Ken Hershman [Showtime Senior VP and General Manager of Sports] called with that kind of an offer, if he said he'd pay us $2.3 million, then we'd fight Donaire again also. Donaire is with Top Rank and yet I have never had a phone call from either Todd duBoef or from Bob Arum about a rematch. And HBO shows no interest in this particular fight, either."
While it sounds like Shaw is now open to the possibility of a rematch, the problem is that if Darchinyan is asking for $2 million, how much would Donaire want to get? Seeing as how he's the one who knocked out Darchinyan in the first place, I'm quite sure he's going to want even more. While the rematch is clearly one of the biggest fights between two of the smaller men that can be made, I'm not quite sure it's worth the $4-$5 million that would likely have to be split between the two fighters. In fact, I don't even think that Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo got that much money for their second fight...and that was a rematch that was far more worthy of being made.
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