Avedis Duvenjian and his son Tígran accept the Members' Choice award from HGTV's Carter Oosterhouse (left) in 2012.
Tigran Duvenjian, draped in the American flag, won the Muay Thai Kickboxing World Championship in October.
There is a new champion in the Duvenjian family.
Tigran, familiar to wood flooring professionals who have seen him accompanying his father, Avedis Duvenjian of Archetypal Imagery Corp., on many NWFA Wood Floor of the Year Award stages, won the Muay Thai Kickboxing World Championships in Carrara, Italy, at the end of October.
Tigran competed in the open-weight, 13-year Juniors division as a member of the United States team. He never had any doubt he would walk away with the gold medal, though dad was a bit more worried.
“Right before the fight, the whole U.S. team is there and he’s laughing and making jokes and I said, ‘Listen! Concentrate!,’” Duvenjian recalled. “And he said, ‘Dad, relax. I got this. I’m going to be the champion of the world.’”
Where did he get the drive? From watching his dad win wood flooring awards. He told his dad before the final fight that, in 2012, when he walked on stage with his dad and Vartan Arutyunian to receive an NWFA Wood Floor of the Year award, he was inspired.
“He told me, ‘I was holding the trophy, and I saw the joy in your face and Vartan’s. I was a part of it, but I didn’t make it. I wanted to be a champion so badly in that moment, I got inspired,’” Duvenjian said.
Tigran’s win has inspired something in his dad, too. The locale for the fight, Carrara, is known worldwide for its marble. Duvenjian said he’s currently swamped with interesting wood floor projects, but one day in the future he might install a parquet floor with Carrara marble inlays and dedicate it to his son, the champion.
