Tim Bradley vs. Brandon Rios possible for November 7th in Las Vegas

By Boxing News - 09/03/2015 - Comments

rios9999By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Robert Garcia may have let the cat out of the bag today in Tweeting a message saying that his fighter Brandon Rios (33-2-1, 24 KOs) will be fighting for a world title against WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (32-1-1, 12 KOs) on November 7th at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. However, the official word hasn’t come from Top Rank, the promoters for the two fighters, so boxing fans will need to wait for an announcement.

Top Rank was trying to put together a fight between Rios and WBO welterweight champion Kell Brook, but the negotiations went nowhere.

Rios hasn’t fought since last January when he defeated Top Rank fighter Mike Alvarado by a 3rd round knockout.

Rios has been very unhappy that he’s been sitting all this time for the past eight months without fighting. But he’s lucky to be fighting at all if they get him the fight against Bradley, because it could have been worse with him not fighting at all. There aren’t a lot of guys around Rios’ weight in the Top Rank stable, so he’s kind of in a bind.

Bradley defeated Top Rank fighter Jessie Vargas in his last fight in June in winning a 12 round decision to pick up the WBO 147lb title in a mostly one-sided fight. Bradley bounced back in winning that fight from his poor performance last year against Diego Chaves.

Bradley ran out of gas in the 2nd half of the fight, and was badly punishment by the harder punching Chaves. Bradley was fortunate not to have taken a loss in that fight because he could very well have lost it.

It’s going to be a tough fight for Rios because he doesn’t have much hand speed. For him to defeat Bradley, he’s going to need to put a lot of pressure on him and swing for the fences.

Rios can’t afford to plod forward and think that Bradley is going to let him fight on the inside, because that’s not going to happen. If Rios can fight like he did in his third fight with Alvarado, then I think he can win this fight. But it’s still going to be difficult for Rios due to his lack of hand speed.

Bradley and Rios have something in common in that they both fought Chaves last year, and both were lucky to avoid getting beaten. Rios should have lost to Chaves, but the referee disqualified Chaves in the 9th round with him ahead of Rios.

This is a fight that is logical for Top Rank promoter Bob Arum to make because he likes to put together a lot of in house fights involving his own fighters rather than having them fight other fighters not promoted by Top Rank. I guess the theory in matching his own guys against each other is Arum isn’t helping other promoters increase their fighter’s popularity and worth. But at the same time it works against Arum by his own fighters not increasing their popularity because they’re not always put in the best fights match-ups, especially when you start seeing a lot of rematches.



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