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The Boxing Bruin
By Steve Kim (October 21, 2004)
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UCLA is one of the most respected and prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country. The school offers a wide variety of majors and if you walk around the campus, located in the beautiful setting of Westwood, you can see the diversity of its student body.
It has approximately 25,000 undergraduates from a cadre of different backgrounds and interests. Recently, bantamweight Kahren Harutyunyan became the newest Bruin.
Harutyunyan, who sports a record of 11-2-3, is a junior at UCLA after completing two years at Glendale Community College, majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing. With this move, Harutyunyan has become of the few professional fighters to pursue their college degree.
"It wasn't a difficult decision because it has always been a part of my life and my family's life," he explained outside of Freddie Roach's Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood before an afternoon workout. "It's not something we just came up with. I want to get an education; it has always been a part of my life. What was difficult was to do them together. As you know boxing takes a lot of time and energy. So that was the part that was difficult.
"My parents are fully supportive of me, so they say, 'You don't need to work, we'll support you as much as you need. You'll live with us, you just do your boxing and your education.
"So it does seem hard and it is hard but if you don't do any outside thing, it is doable and the reason I wanted to do it and not give up my education is to prove to people that it is doable and that human potential is a lot and people can make use of it."
What's impressive about Harutyunyan's pursuit of his education is that he came to America just seven years ago at the age of 15, from his homeland of Armenia.
"My dad's friend played a lottery for us, for a green card for permanent residence here and we won it," he explained of his migration to the States. "Before that we had never thought about moving here because my dad and my mom, they're musicians; they had a job there and me and my sister were getting our education back at home. So we won the lottery and we said, 'Y'know what? It's God given, let's go and try it.' So we moved here in '97'.
"I was in school, I never took off fighting. I fought some amateurs here and then I turned pro."
Despite his limited time in this country, Harutyunyan speaks fluent English and converses easily. Coming in as a 10th grader at Glendale High, the adjustment to his new surroundings was made rather easily.
"I knew a lot," he says of his acumen with our language. "In fact, when I took the test for high school I was placed at ESL (English is Second Language), fourth level, which is the highest level. After that you go to regular English. And in my class there were American people, people that were born here. People who spoke English. Grammatically, I was much better than them."
Doesn't say a lot about our public school system, does it? But how did Harutyunyan become so adept, so quickly in speaking English?
"As I was boxing from Armenia, my dad put me into some private English lessons," he explained. "He was thinking that since I was going to start traveling Europe and stuff for tournaments, he said, 'I don't want you to be a dumb fighter. When you go outside, I want you to be able to communicate with people.'
"Education has always been an important part of my family," he continues, pointing out that he's actually tri-lingual. "Russian is the second language in Armenia, so I knew Armenian and Russian, so he put me in English."
His trainer, the respected Roach, supports his fighter's pursuit of his college degree.
"It's going to give him something to fall back on if boxing doesn't work out," he says. "Too many fighters out there, they have nothing to fall back on. Education is great for anybody, of course. I still think fighters have too much down time. They run an hour in the morning, a couple hours in the gym and do another workout possibly later. It's four hours a day and they have 20 hours to get in trouble - and they will."
For Harutyunyan, a degree could mean options that his trainer never had after his fighting days ended.
"When I retired I was a telemarketer," recalled Roach, with a grimace, shaking his head. "I'm not too good at sales but I was selling things on the phone. My phone name was 'Joe Davis'. It put food on the table, it was the worst job I ever had in my life."
The stark reality is that many fighters pursuing a career in prizefighting forgo their educations. Unlike other sports like football and basketball - where there's at least a guise of getting an education through college scholarships - boxing doesn't provide those types of opportunities.
"Yeah definitely," agreed Roach. "Even in school, my track coach was my math teacher. I ran track and passed math. They'll let athletes slide and so forth. The thing is, education comes second because you think you're going to make it in the boxing career and become rich and famous. But only a few do that and even then, it doesn't mean they're going to make it. Look, Mike Tyson made $300 million."
While many other boxers may have up to 20 hours to waste during the day as Roach mentions, Harutyunyan isn't one of them.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, he will get up at four in the morning to get his roadwork in. At noon he heads to the gym. By mid-afternoon he is studying and taking care of his schoolwork. In the evening he will go through a regimen that includes weight training and swimming.
On Tuesday and Thursday, he wakes up at seven and readies himself for a full day on campus. From ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, the 22-year old bantamweight is in class. By five, he is back at the gym for his daily workout. By eight, he's back home, mostly getting rested for another busy day.
"On Tuesday and Thursday, I'd be lying if I said I study, because I'm done. Once I get home, I'm done," he admits, with a chuckle.
What a slacker.
But on a serious note, Harutyunyan sees the parallel between succeeding in the classroom and the ring.
"I think in everything you want to be good at, you have to make the commitment. If it's boxing, if it's college, if it's just an average job you have. If you want to be good at it, you have to make the commitment, which I have done. Yes, there is a parallel."
"He knows he has a short time in here, so he wants to give it his best right now," adds Roach. "So the thing is, he works very hard. He's a hard guy to get fights for because he's too talented for his own good and his style, he's more of a boxer than a puncher, so it's tough getting him fights. But he's definitely a good fighter, he holds his own with Manny Pacquiao, Israel Vazquez - he's great sparring for those guys - and he's a good kid to be around."
Roach is correct about Harutyunyan, who is a solid, tough craftsmen in the ring, but doesn't possess a lot of punching power, as shown by the fact he has no knockouts or stoppages to his credit. Also, he's been beset by some bad luck. In his last fight in August he was well ahead on points through seven rounds of a scheduled eight rounder, only to have his fight stopped because of a nasty gash he suffered over his left eye, giving him his second professional defeat.
"He's had some bad luck; I mean he was winning every round in his last fight and he got caught with a right hand, the other guy busted him open, he had a real bad cut and with one round to go, they stopped the fight," explained Roach, who added, "Then at the Playboy Mansion, the announcers had him winning every round on that show and they called it a draw. So he's had some bad luck but the feeling is if he keeps working hard, I think he'll be OK."
The bout that Roach is referring to was his six-round draw against Jose Nieves in July of 2002, that was televised nationally on ESPN2.
Professional boxing is much like acting. For every Tom Cruise, there are thousand of others who wait on tables looking for their big breaks that never come. Harutyunyan is well aware that the odds of him striking it rich in boxing are steep.
"I'm going to be realistic about it," he says."Before now, I didn't have a manager. I was the one calling promoters, asking for the fights and Freddie was helping me do that. But recently I've met a guy who's going to manage me and so we'll see how it goes with the management, and in about a year or year-and-a-half, it'll be clear if it'll work out for me or not. I just want to be realistic. If I see there is a barrier that I can't overcome - and it's not only physically or my boxing ability. In this business there's a lot of things besides boxing, business-wise, so if I see we can't break through, I'm not going to bang my head on the same wall for the rest of my life."
But for now, he lives the life of a boxer and student. But his profession keeps him from living the college life. For him, there are no all-night keggers, sleeping in front of the Pauley Pavilion, waiting in line for tickets for the big game or any of that.
"That's what I've been missing a lot, the college life," he laments. "I go there and I see kids being in parties, living on a college campus, I can't. I don't know how it's going to work out for me at UCLA but in junior college, people would look at me and always tell me, once they got to know me, 'When we didn't know you, we thought you were the worst person in the world. Just always quiet, sometimes maybe arrogant.' I said,' No, I'm coming here tired. I don't have time to enjoy the stuff you enjoy, the parties, the clubs. I just can't be a part of it.'
And that's the thing I've been missing a lot."
For now Harutyunyan is just another undergrad at UCLA, but even this unassuming and humble student would like a little recognition for what he does.
"You know what frustrates me," he asks, rhetorically. "I had a black eye the other day, and none of my professors asked, 'What happened to your eye?' so I could explain to them. They didn't ask me, they just don't know it yet," he said, now breaking into a laugh. "I really want them to know about it, but as always I've been a kind of person that lets my work speak for me."
Who knows, maybe they thought he got into a fraternity brawl?
But Harutyunyan hasn't been doing any real fighting for a while as he has let his cut heal. He had a late September bout scrapped because of if and he is unsure of when he'll box again.
"I'm waiting for whatever chance," he says. "If it's a minor title, just to achieve something, that would be worthwhile and I'll just present it so they'll be proud of me and I'll be proud to represent myself and the school."
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