Boxing

It’s a sleepy, overcast Monday morning in northeast Glendale. Symbolic of the setting outside the Glendale Civic Auditorium is the atmosphere inside it. Scattered workers buff the auditorium floors of an empty hall incurring the first stages of a transformation. No more than a handful of people occupy a structure that will play host in just a few days to the Jewel City’s first sanctioned boxing event in more than 60 years. It is inside these walls that Kahren Harutyunyan is still hard at work, days removed from making a year’s worth of effort finally come to fruition.

GLENDALE — Having aided in the burgeoning careers of boxer Vanes Martirosyan and mixed martial artists Manny Gamburyan and Karen Darabedyan, among others, as a trainer, Roma Kalantaryan has always wanted to do more when it came to the fight game. And Kalantaryan, the proprietor of the Main Event Sports Club in Glendale, has teamed up with friend John Nemkerekyan to form King of the West Promotions, which will put on its first-ever fight card on Thursday at the Circus Disco in Hollywood when it presents “Rage Against the Ropes,” a hybrid fighting event that will feature both boxing and MMA. “I’m very excited,” said Kalantaryan, who will present a card that’s scheduled to feature six MMA fights and four boxing bouts with five fighters having local ties on the card.

It’s “Rocky” for the real world. Kahren Harutyunyan, a champion boxer, has one night to prove himself in front of thousands of pumped fans at the Glendale Civic Auditorium in June. If the match goes wrong, Harutyunyan may be finished before his hometown crowd — except he won’t be one of the fighters in the ring. He’s the promoter burdened with the task of proving to Glendale that boxing isn’t a social detriment. Already, this is a more interesting plot than “Rockys” II, III, IV, V and VI — partly, of course, because the ending isn’t a given.

This is the first of a three-part feature story on the life and career of undefeated Glendale boxing phenom Vanes “The Nightmare” Martirosyan. It will run in consecutive installments.   Before the “Nightmare,” there was just a dream. The fame, honor and respect that Vanes Martirosyan has garnered as an amateur prodigy, a teenage Olympian and a professional boxing prospect, and the ultimate glory the fast-rising undefeated welterweight hopes to yet capture as a world title holder — it all started as a gleam in the eye of his father Norik Martirosyan.

A few days before he was scheduled to fight in his next boxing match, Art Hovhannesyan made a call to his mother in Armenia. It’s a call he’s made eight previous times in his professional boxing career, a conversation that lasted a few minutes and left his mom nervous about her son’s future in the ring. “You know how moms are,” Hovhannesyan, a Glendale resident, says. “She’ll be up, worrying.” His mom has been concerned about her son since he left his younger siblings, father and mother in 2006 to forge a new bloodline with fighters in the United States.

To become a successful champion boxer, a tireless work ethic and a good heart are necessary according to Edmond 'The Diamond' Tarverdyan, a 29-year-old coach who started boxing as a boy before going on to train Olympians. “You gotta love the sport and train hard,” he said. “Of course being the best fighter takes much more than that. You need everything - balance speed power - so everything comes in place at the high level competition.” On a recent Thursday evening, Tarverdyan's amateur boxing students spent an hour at his Glendale Fighting Club conditioning their bodies with push-ups, sit ups and boxing technique.

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — On the eve of his professional boxing debut, Arthur Bernetsyan said all he was worried about was getting the win. And on Friday night at Glendale Glory 2 at the Glendale Civic Auditorium, he did just that. Shortly after ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” broadcast ended with a thrilling middleweight bout that saw Roman Karmazin knock out Dionisio Miranda in the 10th round, Bernetsyan, fighting out of Glendale by way of Armenia, made his way to the ring.

GLENDALE — It’s been just over eight months since up-and-coming welterweight Vito “Casper” Gasparyan last fought, a span in which quite a bit has transpired. Gasparyan, who formerly trained at the Glendale Fighting Club, has had several fights canceled over the past months, all while putting down roots in a new gym with a new trainer. All systems are go for his latest scheduled fight, however, when the effects of the layoff from actual fighting, good or bad, and his recently formed affiliation with Fortune Gym in Los Angeles will become evident.

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — With the sport of boxing as a whole being showcased at Friday night’s Glendale Glory card, it was two Jewel City fighters that had the Glendale Civic Auditorium crowd the most captivated. With local promoter Kahren Harutyunyan’s event grabbing as much notice outside of the ring for being the first sanctioned prize-fighting card in the city in 62 years, Gapo “The Ghost” Tolmajyan and Art “Lionheart” Hovhannesyan gave the Glendale fans plenty to cheer about inside the ring.

More than just another fighter training center, at a time when one seems to be springing up on every other corner, the Glendale Fighting Club has transcended that status and become a hub of activity and a touchstone of significance in the fighting scene, both near and far. The modest yet sparklingly clean and well-outfitted corner shop situated among rows of car dealerships on Brand Blvd. serves as the base of operations for two longtime friends, Edmond Tarverdyan and George Bastrmajyan, who together comprise one of the fastest rising grass-roots enterprises in training, management and promotions in the current landscape of combat sports.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff's bomb squad was called to the Goodwill store in downtown Glendale Sunday after workers found a gas canister and mask while rifling through a box of donations, officials said. A bomb squad member removed the gas canister, which had the potential of dispersing a chemical agent if activated, because they believed they could safely transport it to their facility and destroy it there, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. “It was an actual device,” he said.

CABAZON - Gabriel Tolmajyan and his Glendale Fighting Club camp walked away from his co-main event on ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights" feeling they had earned a victory. But the only opinions that mattered were those of the trio of ringside judges who scored it 78-74 twice and 79-73 for Abraham Lopez, who notched the unanimous decision over Glendale's Tolmajyan on Friday evening at the Morongo Casino. "To be honest, it was a very close fight," said Edmond Tarverdyan, Tolmajyan's trainer at GFC. "If you look at a boxing match [as]

In a fight he couldn't lose, Vanes "Nightmare" Martirosyan seemed to know he couldn't win. Anything less than a prompt annihilation of 41-year old club fighter Troy Lowry on Saturday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio would have been an embarrassment to the World Boxing Council Silver light middleweight champion. But soon after had he dispatched the overmatched Lowry at the end of three one-sided rounds, Martirosyan sounded embarrassed that the match was ever made.

Opposition to a planned Walmart in Burbank surged this week as critics demanded the city first address promised traffic improvements before allowing the mega-retailer to move in. Backed by an attorney for the powerful United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 770, opponents packed the Burbank City Council Chambers on Tuesday demanding due consideration be paid to the impact a Walmart would have on an already congested network of roads surrounding...

Vanes "Nightmare" Martirosyan's world title chase is in a holding pattern at the moment, which finds him ready to take on his second relatively unknown down-on-their-luck opponent in a row simply in order to avoid ring rust in the event a big fight materializes. Martirosyan (31-0, 19 knockouts) will put his World Boxing Council Silver light middleweight title on the line in a 10-round bout against 41-year old Troy Lowry (28-11, 17 KOs), a man 16 years his senior, as part of the undercard of Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.'s WBC middleweight title defense against Marco Antonio Rubio on Saturday at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

After months of legal wrangling, a multimillion-dollar legal dispute involving a compensation fund for descendants of Armenian Genocide victims has hit another snag: more than 1,700 of the 13,500 claims cannot be found. In U.S. District Court on Monday, attorney Roman Silberfeld said 1,766 claims “cannot be accounted for” after 41 boxes of claims were moved from the offices of attorneys Mark Geragos and Brian Kabateck to a neutral location at the Loyola Law School. Silberfeld said he has documentation that the fund's administrator, Glendale resident Persagh Kartalian, transferred 51 boxes of insurance claims at one point, but Silberfeld isn't sure of their destination.

Prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against a 47-year-old Monrovia man who allegedly twice stole from an offering box at Holy Family Catholic Church. Robert Amabisca faces two felony counts of second-degree commercial burglary and a misdemeanor count of possessing burglary tools, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Amabisca was arrested Monday on the church grounds at 209 E. Lomita Ave. after a facilities manager recognized him from surveillance video footage of a Dec. 29 theft, during which he was seen flipping the offering box upside down to steal money from a slot, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

Donations inside an offering box have again been stolen from Holy Family Catholic Church, police said. The theft was reported 5:25 p.m. Thursday after a woman saw a man flip the offering box upside down and attempt to retrieve money from a slot, according to Glendale police reports. This incident wasn't the first theft of donations from the church at 209 E. Lomita Ave. Last year, Peter Galindro was convicted of two felony counts of burglary after stealing about $400 from the church's collection boxes, which contained donations to help the poor and for Haiti relief.

A 21-year-old Glendale man who stopped by the Police Department to pay a parking ticket ended up leaving with a citation for petty theft after he took a Jenga game from a toy donation box for low-income families. Vruyr Nazaryan was cited Dec. 8 on suspicion of petty theft after a police officer noticed that he had allegedly taken the wood block game from the Cops For Kids donation box located in police headquarters, Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. Police, who run the program, hand out the collected gifts to low-income Glendale families for Christmas.

As the calendar turns to 2012, there's sure to be no shortage of rumors and hypotheticals tossed about as to who, when and where Vanes "Nightmare" Martirosyan will fight next. On Monday, Boxing News 24's Jason Kim reported a particularly juicy one - Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on Feb. 4 at the Alamodome in San Antonio. At first glance, the matchup would seem to have everything the Glendale-based Martirosyan (31-0, 19 knockouts) has been clamoring for lately. At 44-0-1 with a fervent following and a famous bloodline, Chavez Jr. is a bigger fish in the boxing world than any of Martirosyan's previous foes.