Brandon Rios may retire if he loses to Alvarado, says trainer Robert Garcia

By Boxing News - 01/20/2015 - Comments

rios99By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Robert Garcia says he may tell his fighter former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (32-2-1, 23 KOs) to permanently hang up the gloves and go into retirement if he loses his fight against Mike Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs) this Saturday night at the 1stBank Center, in Bloomfield, Colorado, USA.

Garcia says he won’t tell him to retire if Rios loses in an exciting fashion in a fight that is competitive. But if he gets pretty well dominated then he’ll let him know that he thinks he should walk away from the sport. Garcia, however, thinks Rios will retire on his own accord if he takes a one-sided whipping by Alvarado out of feelings of shame.

“For us it’s pretty much do-or-die. Brandon needs to be aggressive because if he doesn’t win it could be his last fight,” Garcia said via RingTV.com. “Depending on the outcome and how much punishment he takes, I might even advise him to retire. If he loses he would probably be ashamed to come back. If he loses and gives the fight of the year type then there might be a fight against [Ruslan] Provodnikov.”

Rios has taken some punishment in his losses to Alvarado and Manny Pacquiao. He also took some big shots in his questionable win over Diego Chaves in his last fight. Garcia didn’t comment on that fight, but you have to pretty much call it a loss for Rios because he was behind on the scorecards in the 9th round when the referee disqualified Chaves suddenly for supposedly throwing an elbow.

Chaves had Rios in a headlock but he didn’t throw an elbow, which makes the disqualification all the more strange. Rios also was given a controversial win over Richard Abril in 2012. If you count those two fights as defeats, Rios has four out of his last five fights. The question is why Garcia didn’t advise Rios to retire a long time ago, because he’s been heading downhill pretty much since 2012.

Garcia goes on to say that he thinks that there are still some really big fights out there for Rios if he wins on Saturday night. Garcia specifically mentions guys like Tim Bradley, Ruslan Provodnikov, Adrien Broner, Jessie Vargas, and Diego Chaves as the type of fights that Rios could get. But he thinks that he’ll be stuck mostly fighting the Top Rank guys like Bradley, Vargas and Chaves rather than Golden Boy Promotions fighters.



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