Fighting outside the box

To psyche himself up for the biggest fight of his career, a title bout with Tatsuo Hayashida earlier this month, Kahren Harutyunyan pressed the play button on his CD player and immersed himself in the music.

It wasn’t his motivational technique that distinguishes the 23-year-old UCLA student from other boxers. It was his choice of music.

Harutyunyan, a junior, listened to the soothing sounds of Antonio Vivaldi, like he does before every fight, prior to unleashing a fury of punches en route to a 12-round decision victory over Hayashida for the North American Boxing Organization junior bantamweight title. His love of classical music and his enthusiasm for the arts are two of the reasons that Harutyunyan defies every stereotype associated with boxers.

“It really hurts me that boxers are perceived as uneducated people,” Harutyunyan said. “Because of fighters who have done stupid things in the past, there’s this image of a boxer as a street fighter.”

An Armenian artist

Hailing from a family of musicians, Harutyunyan, an Armenian native, never fit those stereotypes.

He played the violin as a child. He reads epic poetry. And he values his time at the library or local museums just as much as he does his training time in the gym.

Even the way that Harutyunyan was introduced to boxing distinguishes him from his peers.

Making a living in the music industry in Armenia was difficult, so when Harutyunyan was 10 years old, his father pushed him to pursue sports instead. With the public tennis and swimming clubs closed because of lack of funding, boxing was the most convenient option. It also offered some long-term benefits.

“My dad wanted me to learn to get beaten up and not to beat up,” Harutyunyan said. “It gets you ready for life, physically and emotionally.”

Once Harutyunyan left Armenia as a 15-year-old, it sparked his passion for the arts. Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1997, Harutyunyan was told that he would quickly ingratiate himself into American culture and forget about his childhood friends within a couple of years. The prospect worried him immensely.

“I was really scared about losing my cultural identity,” he said. “I thought to myself: I don’t want to forget all my friends. I don’t want to forget about my background.”

So Harutyunyan started reading Armenian history and poetry and studying the things that would preserve what he cherished most. It wasn’t long before his taste in literature branched out to other regions of the world. After reading Dante Alighieri, Homer and Leo Tolstoy, he then picked up American literature and eventually settled on English as his major at UCLA.

He would go to museums with his older sister, Lilit, an art historian, and he discovered his preference for modern art. Though his enthusiasm for the arts is important to him, he never lost sight of his passion for boxing.

Within a week of arriving in the United States, he had already found a boxing club where he began working out. He has maintained his training ever since.

Weighing his priorities

It’s not just Harutyunyan’s eclectic interests that set him apart from other boxers. His diminutive stature also helps him stand out.

Standing at 5-foot-4 and weighing just 115 pounds, the Armenian native doesn’t fit with fans’ images of a big, bruising fighter. His undersized frame deceives those who only recognize the sport’s heavyweight division.

“People that have never met him think a boxer is going to be this big, heavy guy,” Lilit said. “After seeing him, they’re like, ‘Oh, is he the boxer?’ It’s a surprise.”

Harutyunyan, however, has worked hard over the past few months to turn his size into an advantage.

Upon returning to Los Angeles after spending New Year’s in Armenia, Harutyunyan received a call from his manager, Armeni Hakop, who told him that he had set up the junior bantamweight title fight with Hayashida for April 1. The match-up offered Harutyunyan the most lucrative payout and prestige available at the time. The only obstacle was his weight.

After indulging in his native food in Armenia, Harutyunyan weighed in at 130 pounds – 15 too many for the junior bantamweight division. Hakop gave him a little over a month to get his weight down.

Harutyunyan’s training schedule, already remarkably structured, became even stricter leading up to the fight.

As a student at UCLA, he already was accustomed to waking up at 4 a.m. to run a few miles, coming home to sleep for a couple hours before eating breakfast, going to class, and then training afterwards. It was his diet where he made the most changes, thanks to help from his parents and sister, which ensured he lost the weight.

Two weeks before the fight, they stopped eating meals whenever he was around. They wouldn’t even cook in the house, just to make him feel as though he wasn’t missing out on anything.

“We didn’t want him to smell anything delicious,” Lilit said. “It was very hard and gets on his nerves.”

Eliminating most carbohydrates and sugars from his diet, Harutyunyan found organic substitutes instead. Still needing to train religiously, he refused to starve himself or throw up after meals. Instead he did just about everything else to shed a pound or two, even cutting his hair extra short and trimming his nails. When he stepped on the scale for the official weigh-in, it read 114 pounds. The discipline had paid off.

“He didn’t lose any power or shape,” Hakop said. “He did everything right.”

Once in the ring, Harutyunyan did everything right too. In the third round, he scored a knockdown by landing a counter right cross that sent Hayashida to the canvas. Throughout the fight, he successfully dictated the pace with a barrage of hooks and jabs. Meanwhile, outside of a rough fifth round, he was able to largely stay out of Hayashida’s punching range.

“He put on a boxing clinic,” said Freddie Roach, Harutyunyan’s trainer. “To hit and not get hit is the key, and Kahren was hitting on all cylinders.”

The victory propelled Harutyunyan to a No. 7 world ranking in his division and has given him the opportunity to set his sights on the world title. Should he triumph in his next few fights, he will likely fight for that championship, which carries with it roughly $25,000 in prize money and a world of respect and admiration. It’s this latter goal that Harutyunyan says provides the most motivation.

“My major goal is to be successful in college and get a degree to break the stereotypes, and to motivate other boxers to get a degree.”

Harutyunyan’s bookshelf and music collection are breaking the stereotypes. His success inside and outside of the ring may be providing the motivation.