Rios is taking too much punishment in his fights; he needs a new trainer

By Boxing News - 03/31/2013 - Comments

rios44By Allan Fox: Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) is going to need to change his mind frame about taking pride in going to war with his opponents, and taking punishment because he might not last too much longer as a top fighter unless he starts learning how to keep from getting hit as much.

Last night, the 26-year-old Rios took a terrible beating in losing to his nemesis Mike Alvarado by a 12 round unanimous decision. Granted, it was a close fight, as we saw with the scores [115-113, 115-113, 114-113] handed down by the judges, but Rios took a lot of really hard head shots from Alvarado.

Some of the punches were unavoidable, but there were a lot of punches that Rios could have avoided taking had he used more head movement, and used distance. Rios has a great jab as we saw in the fight, and he seemed to be doing his best work when he was on the outside remembering to use his jab. But he kept following Alvarado around and walking into big right hand shots.

Rios could have minimized that by jabbing Alvarado from the outside, and picking his spots to come in and tag him with hard combinations or even single shots.

Bob Arum, the promoter for Rios and Alvarado, is making the wise decision by choosing to not put them back in with each other for their next fight. These guys are using each other up, and it’s better that Arum match them against other guys so that they can get a bigger payday, and let their heads rest a little. At least if they lose their next fight they still will have their third fight to fall back on.

Rios needs think about getting another trainer or at least adding an additional trainer to his team that can teach him some defense because he’s taking too many head shots, and he doesn’t need to find himself slurring his words later in life from the punishment he’s taken.

Maybe Rios should think about signing on with Andre Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter, and moving over the Bay Area in California to work with him because Hunter is good at teaching defense and that’s something that Rios badly needs. He’s probably learned all he can from Robert Garcia about offensive skills, so he’s good enough already in that area. Now he needs to learn defense and some finesse, and that’s something Hunter can definitely teach him.



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