The Armenian-Italian all-time great has called it a day.
Giorgio Petrosyan has called time on a legendary, generation-spanning career, a reign that lasted so long that some of his fans will be able to smell the Peanuts comic as they read this: The Doctor is out. Born Gevorg Petrosyan at the temporal and geographic tail end of the Soviet Union in Armenia (frequent butt of Soviet jokes), Petrosyan came to his adoptive home of Italy at thirteen.
As a teenager in the mid-2000s, he began competing in Muay Thai, at a time when conventional wisdom was that some of the strongest fighters in the sport outside of Thailand were from France or Italy. He found early and continued success in the European scene, steadily growing in renown and size alongside one of the other underground future favorites of the day, Tyrone Spong.
His first loss came in Thailand against Nonthanan Por. Pramuk, then compatriot of the legendary Buakaw, but it is perhaps here that the first seeds of an obvious greatness sprouted, as the kind of conspiracy and innuendo that followed this result were the usual domain of a long-beloved champion.
It wouldn’t be long before the twists and turns of fate would put him in the ring with exactly such a beloved champion, as a late replacement Petrosyan famously fought Buakaw to an oft-debated split draw in 2007.