By Eric Thomas: The rematch between Mike Alvarado (34-1, 23 KO’s) and Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) on March 30th drew a reported 1.2 million viewers on HBO, which is in the ballpark of some of HBO’s recent fights involving Bernard Hopkins vs. Tavoris Cloud and Ruslan Provodnikov vs. Timothy Bradley.
The Alvarado-Rios II fight also had an excellent gate of 5,400 fans that purchased tickets to the fight at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Both guys took a lot of damage as Alvarado ended up winning the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 115-113, 115-113 and 114-113.
The Alvarado vs. Rios II replay will air tonight, Tuesday, on HBO2 at 11 p.m. ET/PT.
Boxing fans have calling for a third fight between Alvarado and Rios, but their promoter Bob Arum wisely prefers that they face other opponents before he puts them back together in the future. It’s a good move by Arum because these two guys could end up using each other up in the same way that Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez did with their four fights.
Both guys took a ton of damage in the first three fights, and neither was the same afterwards. Arum wants to let Rios and Vazquez fight other guys from his Top Rank stable, and then put them back in with each other possibly in 2014 if not this year.
Rios needs to work on trying to get out of the way of shots because he’s not going to last long in the sport by going toe-to-toe with everyone he faces. It was good when it was working out for him against weaker opposition, but in his two fights with Alvarado he’s taken some nasty head shots and that can’t be good for his career to keep taking punches like that.
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