By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-2-1, 23 KOs) says for his fight this Saturday night against Diego Chaves (23-1, 19 KOs) that he’s trained like he used to do when he was a world champion years ago.
Chaves is by far the biggest puncher that Rios have ever faced before during his career and he’s going to be hit a lot in this fight. Rios takes pride in having a great chin that he feels is unbreakable, but we’re going to find out if that’s true or not when he starts getting hammered by Chaves’s huge shots.
Rios sometimes likes to drop his guard during his fights to let his opponents hit him in the head. I guess it’s some kind of way for Rios to try and intimidate his opponents while at the same time showing off in front of the fans. But I wouldn’t advise Rios to try that trick on Saturday against Chaves, because he’s likely going to end up knocked out cold.
Chaves hits way too hard for Rios to be foolishly dropping his guard to let him hit him in the head. If Rios tries that tactic in this fight then he could end up punch drunk and unable to fight hard in the last half of the fight. When a fighter takes too many head shots it kind of wears them down as the fight progresses even when they’re able to take the punches the way Rios does.
Rios hasn’t said anything about having worked on his defense for this fight, so you’ve got to assume that this is an area that his trainer Robert Garcia didn’t cover with him too much. Rios needs to try and move his head a little to avoid getting hit so much in this fight instead of blocking punches with his face. While this fight likely won’t go to the cards there’s still a chance that the two of them could go the distance. Rios doesn’t need to give away the fight by forgetting about his defense.
Chaves said recently that his main goal for this fight is to go out and knock Rios out as quickly as possible. He doesn’t want to let him hang around for a long time in this fight, because he wants the fight to end quickly so that he can put on a good impression in front of the StubHub Center crowd in Carson, California.
Chaves has the perfect opponent for him to KO in this fight in Rios, because he’s been pretty well softened up in his last three fights against Mike Alvarado [x2] and Manny Pacquiao. Rios took a career’s worth of punishment in those two fights, and it’s hard to imagine him being able to take even worse punishment against a pure slugger like Chaves. Rios also took a lot of punishment in his fights against John Murray and Richard Abril. Rios won the fights, but he was still hit an awful lot by them.
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