The man who brought boxing back to Glendale

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.

A Glendale resident since moving from Armenia in 1997, the 2000 Glendale High graduate began boxing when he was only 10, taking up a sport that would captivate his life and lead him to this day.

Fifty years before Harutyunyan came to Glendale, boxing was banned in the city.

Thus, for the unassuming, 5-foot-4 bantamweight boxer, just one of the many roadblocks that stood in his path during a promising career in the ring was the inability of ever fighting in front of a hometown crown.

But, roughly a year ago, the burgeoning 27-year-old promoter set out to change that for future local pugilists, as he set out in search of Glendale Glory — the card that he presents tonight.

Tonight’s landmark boxing event will see Glendale give the Sweet Science a chance, it will see area fighters given a shot to compete in front of a familiar following and it will see the latest – and most important – chapter in Harutyunyan’s boxing odyssey come to form.

“I don’t really want to say I doubted it, but I don’t want to say I was 100% confident,” says Harutyunyan of getting the Glendale City Council to temporarily lift the city’s ban on boxing in March. “All I knew is I was gonna go all the way, whatever it took.”

Not long after graduating from Glendale High, Harutyunyan turned pro at the age of 18.

His career was hardly met with fanfare, thus, he had no hand-picked opponents served up to him and his 1-1-1 record over his first three fights is likely evidence of that.

“Most of my career, I managed myself,” Harutyunyan says. “I got my own fights, talked to promoters, looked for opportunities.”

But opportunities are hard enough to find for anyone fighting in the 112-pound weight class or anywhere else in that vicinity.

“One in many, many make a lot of money in those weight classes,” says Edmond Tarverdyan, a champion Muay Thai kickboxer who trains aspiring boxers at the Glendale Fighting Club.

Tarverdyan’s known Harutyunyan since their days as Nitros at Glendale, but in a division dominated by a Hispanic fan following, the Armenian with a boxing style that was more art than power would always struggle to find an ample following.

“He is a dancer boxer who thinks about defense first and offense second. If you like the actual art of boxing … you would appreciate his style,” says Soren Krabbe, a documentary filmmaker who’s followed Harutyunyan’s career since the spring of 2005 for an upcoming film. “He just doesn’t have the appeal of the masses for that weight class.”

But my most accounts he had the skill.

Harutyunyan posted a 14-3-3 record in six years’ worth of boxing. In April of 2005, he bested Tatsuo Hayashida for the WBO NABO Super Flyweight title. Two fights and nine months later, though, he lost to Nonito Donaire by split decision for the vacant NABF super flyweight title. The 10-round loss saw him simply run out of time as Harutyunyan was knocked down in the second round, but had rallied in the latter stanzas.

One more fight in July of 2006 was his last.

“Let’s put it this way, he was a very, very good fighter,” says Krabbe, whose film “Blood, Sweat and Membership” is due to be completed at year’s end. “With the proper management he could have been a world champion.”

Harutyunyan, who balanced his time training and boxing with earning a degree in English Literature from UCLA, had long before come to the conclusion that monster paydays were far from likely for him inside the ring.

“I was still trying to get a shot at the title for the glory of it,” he says.

But Harutyunyan would later find another avenue of glory to fight for.

With 20 fights of experience in his back pocket, Harutyunyan is now working on promoting his fifth boxing card, as he has championed the cause of bringing boxing back to his hometown.

Quick to admit he’s still learning on the job, he’s already promoted cards in Woodland Hills, Santa Anita and the world-famous Playboy Mansion. And there are myriad other places he could have inquired about to put on his latest show.

“Anywhere else, it would’ve been much easier,” Tarverdyan says. “Kahren wants to do such a good job so we can have more shows in Glendale.”

Anywhere else, it wouldn’t have taken in the neighborhood of a year to put together a boxing card that will have roughly 1,000 fans see it.

“Some people would’ve just turned and said screw it,” says Steve Bash of Bash Boxing, which has co-promoted three events with Harutyunyan’s Art of Boxing Promotions. “A lot of people would’ve given up.”

But Harutyunyan didn’t give up. His intentions and intensity never waned.

That’s why, on a sleepy and overcast Monday, the boxer-turned-promoter has moved his office into the Glendale Civic Auditorium.

“I’m a mobile office,” Harutyunyan smiles. “I have an iPhone, that’s my office.”

When Harutyunyan made the decision to become a promoter, even with the success he had gained in the ring, it did not surprise those who knew him best.

“I was not surprised at all,” Krabbe said. “He’s a very driven guy and a very intelligent guy who loves boxing.”

Promoting was a way to stay around the sport he loved and, better yet, a way to take all the ups and downs he had incurred during his career and use them to make Art of Boxing a success and, in the process, look out for the underdogs in the ring just like he had once been.

“I think he felt he could contribute something to help fighters like him who didn’t get the chances,” Krabbe said. “I think he has just such an immense love for the game that he always wanted to be a part of it.”

Adds Bash: “Being a self-made fighter definitely factors into him being a self-made promoter. Being a former boxer, he sees certain things that other people don’t see. You’re in a better position if you know your boxing well, and Kahren does.”

Harutyunyan knows and loves boxing.

It is that tenacity and passion that made him a winner in the ring — and may once again, as well — and those same attributes that have driven him to the Glendale Civic Auditorium.

When he arrived in Glendale more than a decade ago, boxing had already been ingrained in who he was and becoming a pro fighter was something he was destined to become.

“It was already a part of me,” Harutyunyan says. “It wasn’t even a part of the question.”

It’s likely he didn’t know then that it would lead him to where he is now. But a year ago, his goal of bringing the sport he loves to the city he calls home began to take shape. And tonight it becomes an undisputed accomplishment.

“It was a very big goal for him and he worked very hard for it,” Tarverdyan says. “It’s something very big.”

On what is forecasted to be a Saturday with clouds and a chance of drizzle, Harutyunyan hopes to awake with reason to celebrate.

With an iPhone that rarely seems to quiet and an agenda that never appears to wane, Harutyunyan tirelessly pushed forward in the days leading up to him reaching Glendale Glory. He did so even with his first-born son due at any day.

“We might have a show without me,” he smiles.

He hopes by Saturday he’ll be celebrating the birth of his baby boy, the health of his wife, the success of Glendale Glory and the future of his career in boxing, outside and inside the ring.

Harutyunyan’s never uttered the words retirement as it relates to his boxing career.

“I think he has one last fight in him, I do,” Krabbe says. “When he gives you his word, he sticks to it and he’s never said he’s retired. When he sets his mind to anything he accomplishes it.”

And, “if everything was right, I would definitely do it,” says Harutyunyan, who has begun training again, of a potential comeback.

Harutyunyan’s never hesitated that his hopes are that tonight is merely the beginning of boxing in Glendale and his career promoting.

“He’s motivated, he’s determined,” Bash says. “That translates to why he’s still here doing this, getting bigger and better.”

As a father, a fighter and a promoter, there all kinds of possibilities for Harutyunyan. And, as well as anyone, he knows that in the world of boxing, success and opportunity are things that must be fought for — whether inside or outside the ropes.

But if his hands are to continue grasping an iPhone or wrapped by gloves, the one certainty is that Harutyunyan has become the man who brought boxing back to Glendale.

“This is something I feel very passionate about,” he says. “After everything with the city council, the city and the sports fans, I feel enormous responsibility to our city to make this a successful event.

“It became a personal and a community issue. It was on my word and my shoulders to get it done.”