By Dan Ambrose: #4 WBO Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 24 KOs) may not be good enough to beat the best welterweights in the division, but he proved tonight he can beat what appeared to be a totally shot and out of shape Mike Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs) in stopping him in the 3rd round at the 1st Bank Center, Broomfield, Colorado.
For boxing fans hoping to see a good fight in this third fight of their series, they wound up disappointed with Rios treating a timid-looking and poorly prepared Alvarado like a punching bag in nailing him with punch after punch. Rios knocked Alvarado down with a left to the head in the 3rd.
Alvarado got up and was able to survive the round just barely. In between rounds, Alvarado said he couldn’t see out of his right eye, and the fight was then stopped.
The way that Alvarado quit on his stool was very famililar with the way he quit against Ruslan Provodnikov in his 10th round stoppage loss in between rounds in October 2013 in the same city of Broomfield.
For HBO, they ended up with egg on their face for having televised this farce between Rios and Alvarado, because they should have known better given that Alvarado came into the fight having lost 2 out of his last 3 fights.
With this win, Rios captured the WBO International welterweight title and puts himself in position for fights against his promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters. Rios mentioned wanting to fight Provodikov or Victor Ortiz next.
“I’m far from done. I couldn’t see. I’m not done yet at all. I’m far from being at my best. I’ll be back. I didn’t train the way I should have. I wasn’t prepared as I should have been. That’s what I get,” Alvarado said after the fight.
Alvarado appears to be in denial about his career. The way he looked tonight, he has nothing left in the tank. Even if he trains hard, I don’t see him being any better than he was tonight. He made Rios and Provodnikov look much better than they actually are. Rios was the same guy that Diego Chaves and Pacquiao handled. The only difference is he had Alvarado to make him look good.
It was good to see Rios not head-butting tonight. That was a welcome relief, because in his last fight against Chaves, Rios was head-butting like a billy goat each time Chaves would initiate a clinch.
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The highly ranked WBC #2, WBA #2, IBF #3, WBO #2 super middleweight contender Gilberto Ramirez (3-0, 24 KOs) stayed unbeaten with an unimpressive 10 round unanimous decision win over Maxim Vlasov (30-2, 15 KOs) in their catch-weight fight at 171 pounds.
Top Rank might want to take a go slow approach with Ramirez, because he clearly isn’t ready to face the top super middleweights in the division. Ramirez was too easy to hit tonight, and he ended up with bad swelling under his right eye. The final judges’ scores were 96-94, 97-93, 97-93.
Vlasov hurt Ramirez with a series of hard shots in the 10th round that had Ramirez backed up against the ropes and cowering. Luckily for Ramirez there wasn’t an 11th and 12th rounds, because he might have found himself getting knocked out if there was more time left in the fight.
Ramirez dominated most of the fight with his body attack. He was focused entirely on throwing body shots, and he did a good job in that area. However, he didn’t throw enough punches to the head, and he completely forgot about his own defense, as he was so easy to hit.
Ramirez is ranked high, but the sanctioning bodies are doing him no favors with the high ranking they’ve given him, because he would likely lose badly to the best super middleweights in the division like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, James DeGale, Andre Dirrell, Anthony Dirrell, George Groves, and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. All those guys appear to be much better than Ramirez.
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Other boxing results on the card:
Konstantin Ponomarev UD 8 Steve Claggett
Abner Lopez UD 8 Aik Shakhnazaryan
Oleksandr Gvozdyk TKO 2 Cory Cummings
Jeremy Ramos TKO 3 Rene Marquez
Zsolt Daranyi Jr TKO 1 Luis Marquez
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