Rios would have given Pacquiao hell last night, says Robert Garcia

By Boxing News - 01/25/2015 - Comments

rios4222By Dan Ambrose: Robert Garcia, the trainer for #4 WBO welterweight contender Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 24 KOs), thinks with the way that the 28-year-old Rios fought last night in beating Mike Alvarado (34-4, 23 KOs) by a 3rd round knockout, Rios would have given Manny Pacquiao a lot of problems if he’d been in the ring with Rios instead of Alvarado.

For boxing fans who may have forgotten, Rios lost a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision to Pacquiao in November 2013. Rio resembled a punching bag in that fight in the eyes of a lot of fans due to him lacking the hand speed, aggressiveness, talent and willingness to walk Pacquiao down in the manner that he needed to in order to have a better chance of winning.

Rios looked like he gave up early in that fight and just resigned himself to staying on the outside and getting pelted with shots all night long.

“Brandon was never gone. The Brandon that fought today would give a hell of a fight to Pacquiao,” Robert Garcia said via Fighthype.

The question is did Rios look good last night only because he was fighting a guy who looked out of shape and was throwing nothing back at him, or did Rios improve dramatically in one training camp to get back to the level where he was when he beat Miguel Acosta, Anthony Peterson and Urbano Antillon.

Those were some of Rios’ biggest wins of his career when he wasn’t battling weight problems that surfaced later. The fact that Alvarado wasn’t throwing any punches back at Rios might have something to do with Rios looking good. If Alvarado had the presence of mind to stand his ground and let his hands go, he could have given Rios problems in the same way that Diego Chaves, Pacquiao and Richard Abril all did.

Just standing there and taking shots wasn’t exactly the smartest move in the world by Alvarado, and you have to assume that he wasn’t mentally or physically ready to fight last night. Alvarado lacked fired in his belly when he came out there last night, and he seemed wishy-washy in his interview with HBO’s Jim Lampley shortly before the fight.

The victory gives Rios the vacant WBO International welterweight title, and it will likely lead to him getting pushed up the rankings to put him in position to get another fight against Pacquiao. His promoter Bob Arum isn’t going to make that fight yet, but you have to figure that if Rios wins a couple of more fights, maybe even one more, Arum will be looking to setup a rematch between them.

Rios can then test Garcia’s theory that he’d give Pacquiao hell. Since Arum likes to make rematch after rematch with his Top Rank stable fighters, it’s safe to say we’ll soon be seeing Rios back in with Pacquiao for a second fight.

For the time being, Rios is talking about wanting to fight Victor Ortiz. Garcia is talking about Ortiz as well, but he’s also interested in guys like Tim Bradley, Ruslan Provodnikov and Lucas Matthysse.



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