By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-2-1, 23 KO’s) says his next fight date has changed from July 19th to August 2nd. Rios, 28, still doesn’t know who he’ll be facing yet, but it’s definitely not going to be Mike Alvarado. He took a beating last Saturday night in his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Juan Manuel Marquez and he likely won’t be able to get back in the ring that quickly.
“I was supposed to fight July 19th, but now I’m fighting August 2nd,” Rios said to esnewsreporting.com.
In the same interview, Rios said he wanted Marquez next because he thought he thought he’d do well by “charging him” to take the fight to him in a way that Alvarado failed to do. Rios didn’t do much charging in his loss to Manny Pacquiao last November. Rios was plodding forward all night long, taking shot after shot to the head and body. The fight was so one-sided that it probably should have been stopped by the 6th round in order to save Rios from taking needless punishment.
There was no point at all in the fight continuing past the 6th round mark, because Rios was too slow and unskilled to land anything. Slower fighters usually make up for their lack of hand speed by timing their opponents, but Rios couldn’t even do that. He was just there physically and acting like a big sponge for all of Pacquiao’s punches.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would be wise to have Rios’ next fight take place at welterweight, because you just don’t know if he’ll make the weight if they try staging it at 140. Rios says he can still make weight for light welterweight, but I doubt that Arum will want to take that risk of having him come in over the limit or worse, having him too weight drained to fight effectively. Rios barely made weight at welterweight for the Pacquiao fight, and that’s obviously a concern. If Rios can’t even make 147, Arum might have to move him to 154 and keep his fingers crossed that he can make weight for the fights in that division.
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