Former three-time world champion Jorge Linares of Teiken Boxing Gym suffered a 10-round unanimous decision loss to Armenia’s Zhora Hamazaryan on Dec. 11 in a lightweight nontitle fight in Russia’s Ekaterinburg.

All three judges scored the fight in favor of Hamazaryan by the margin of 2 to 8 points.

While the 37-year-old Linares, a former world featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight champion, got off to a good start, throwing his favorite combination blows, the 26-year-old Armenian gradually showed his mettle and forced Linares backpedal. Linares, however, managed to avoid suffering a knockdown.

It was Linares’s third straight defeat since February this year.

With the loss, Linares, born in Venezuela but has been fighting out of the Japanese boxing gym since 2002, has a record of 47 wins, including 29 knockouts, against eight losses. For his part, Hamazaryan has a 13-3-2 win-loss-draw tally with nine KOs.