Brandon Rios wants Gamboa next at 140

By Boxing News - 01/21/2014 - Comments

gamboa434By Chris Williams: After having been embarrassed by Manny Pacquiao and reduced to little more than a punching bag for him, Brandon Rios (31-2-1, 23 KO’s) is now calling out lightweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-0, 16 KO’s) in hopes of getting a fight with him. Gamboa, 32, has been trying to get Rios’ gym mate WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia to agree to fight him, but Mikey’s shown little interest in taking the fight against the dangerous Cuban fighter.

Even if Mikey did want the fight, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum likely won’t let Mikey fight Gamboa. Rios stepped into the conversation and he looks like he’s protecting Mikey by wanting to take on the opponent [Gamboa] that is hunting him to take away his unbeaten record.

I’d pick Gamboa to easily beat Rios by a lopsided 12 round decision. I don’t think Gamboa could knock Rios out, but I think he’d embarrass him badly. I think Gamboa would stop Mikey Garcia and expose him badly if Arum ever let Gamboa fight Mikey.

Here’s what Rios said on his twitter:

“I’ll fight you at 140, but we both know your B*** a** don’t want to so stfu [shut up].”

Here’s what Gamboa said in part:

“Brandon Rios, One day soon I will slap all of that hate from you. That is okay. It is coming. Rios, stop cursing, dude. Be a good role model, man. Listen, I will only go 45% on you. I need to save energy for Mikey after all. I know you can take a punch. It is actually all you can do. Come on, dude, let’s do this. Best chance you got. I am out of practice. You might actually land a few punches on me. You’re getting knocked out.”

Arum would probably let Rios fight Gamboa, but even that’s not a guarantee because Gamboa isn’t with Top Rank, and he would be beating one of Arum’s fighters. Arum would have to know that Rios’ chances of beating Gamboa would be very, very slim due to his slow hand speed, poor defensive skills, and his lack of huge power.

Arum needs to let Mikey take the fight with Gamboa, because if his idea is to match Mikey up with Manny Pacquiao in the near future, then Mikey at least needs to fight one solid guy before doing that. The only quality fighter that Mikey has fought thus far was Orlando Salido, and that fight was stopped prematurely with Mikey suffering a broken nose and complaining he couldn’t breath out of his nose. Salido had a broken nose too, he said, but he was willing to keep fighting. Mikey had started to gas in the Salido fight in the 7th, and he had a lot of rounds ahead of him where he was going to have to eat a lot of hard shots from Salido.



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