By Scott Gilfoid: It’s looking like Britain’s John Murray (31-1, 18 KO’s) will be the next sacrificial lamb for WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (28-0-1, 21 KO’s) to destroy on December 3rd on the undercard of the Miguel Cotto – Antonio Margarito II rematch at the New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Murray was knocked out in his last fight against Kevin Mitchell last July, which makes Murray a pretty horrible choice to be challenging for a title.

Rios said this to Ringtv about Murray: “I’m going to knock Murray out. I’m going to knock him out early…After that, we should shoot for [Yuriorkis] Gamboa maybe in January or February or as soon as possible. After we fight Gamboa, I want to go to 140 and I want to fight Marcos Maidana.”

That sounds like a nice pipe dream for Rios. None of those fights are going to happen other than the Murray bout. Bob Arum, the promoter for Rios and Gamboa, isn’t about to serve Gamboa, one of his future gravy train fighters, to a slugger like Rios. It’s not going to happen next year, the year after or the year after that. Arum won’t want Gamboa beaten and he likely would against the much bigger Rios. As for Rios fighting Maidana, that’s not happening either. Maidana fights for Golden Boy Promotions, and they won’t likely go for a Maidana-Rios fight even though it’s a fight that Maidana would have an excellent chance of winning because of his bigger frame and bigger power. Rios would be crazy to take that fight. He’s not big enough and really is more suited for the lightweight division.

Murray will be slaughtered if he takes the fight with Rios. He’s slow, hittable and coming into this fight having been whipped by Mitchell. Murray absorbed a ton of punishment in that fight and you usually don’t want to take a fighter coming off a beating like that and put him in against an even better fighter like Rios. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to watch the fight for kicks, but it won’t be much of a fight. But, yeah, I want to see this fight.