Alvarado to box Rios tonight

By Boxing News - 01/24/2015 - Comments

alvarado7By Dan Ambrose: Mike Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs) isn’t going to fight Brandon Rios’ style tonight in their third fight together. Instead, Alvarado plans on sticking with the same game that he used to box circles around Rios the last time they faced each other in 2013. In that fight, Alvarado used movement along with occasional flurries to dominate the slow-moving Rios in winning a 12 round decision.

Rios, 28, has said that he’s adapted a game plan that will negate Alvarado’s ability to move around the ring, and that he plans on cutting off the ring on him to force him to fight the same way that he did in their previous fight on HBO.

However, Rios looked very slow in his last fight against Diego Chaves and in his loss to Manny Pacquiao.

It’s probably not realistic because Rios has naturally slow feet. It’s like asking a slow person to run a 100 meter sprint at a higher speed as they age. Rios can’t move any faster because he’s a natural plodder type of fighter.

“The first fight was a test for that technique – a style against a style,” said Alvarado via Fightnews.com. “The second fight is where the adjustments come in. Now that I know I was able to adapt to a certain style, I can make the adjustments I need to make to overcome that type of style. I am going to go in there and stick with my game plan.”

That game plan that Alvarado will be looking to use will be a stick and move style, and it’s likely going to be successful. Alvarado may have struggled in his fights against Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez, but he’s got the ability to out-box a slow mover with the limited talent that Rios has.

One thing that you have to hope that we don’t see is Rios head-butting Alvarado all night long tonight like Rios did in his last fight against Diego Chaves. Each time Chaves would clinch Rios, we’d see Rios tae his head and stick it directly into the face of Chaves.

The referee Vik Drakulitch was seemingly asleep at the wheel, because he let Rios get away with the head-butts. To top off his poor performance in controlling the fight, Drakulitch ended up disqualifying Chaves for a phantom elbow that he supposedly threw in the 9th round. I saw no elbow being thrown by Chaves in that round, but it sure was a lucky break for Rios because without the disqualification, he would have lost the fight to Chaves.

I don’t expect Rios to be able to deal with the movement that Alvarado uses in this fight. But I do see Rios getting dirty any chance he can get by hitting low, head-butting and throwing rabbit shots. I just hope the referee does his job to keep Rios under control, because this fight could turn into an MMA affair very quickly. If it was MMA, Alvarado would destroy Rios because he’s a former high school all state wrestling champion, but Alvarado has too much discipline to let himself get out of control and turn it into a non-boxing fight.



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