Arum in favor of Brandon Rios’ retirement

By Boxing News - 11/08/2015 - Comments

arum787By Tim Fletcher: Brandon Rios’ decision to retire from boxing has been met with approval from his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank, who thinks it’s a good idea for the 29-year-old fighter to hang up the gloves at this point in his career if he’s saved enough money to retire on.

Rios looked like he didn’t have his heart into his fight last night in losing by a 9th round knockout to WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s hard to believe that a motivated Rios would have looked this bad.

The Rios that fought Mike Alvarado last January would have been a real problem for Bradley last night. But after sitting out of the ring ever since that fight, Rios let himself get out of shape, and it was too much for him to get sharp in just seven weeks of training. Rios needed 12 weeks and a couple of tune-up fights to get him ready for a fighter as tough as Bradley, and he obviously wasn’t going to be given that.

“I think Brandon had a great career. He’s one of the most courageous I’ve ever seen in the ring,” Arum said at the post-fight press conference last night. “I remember fights where he looked like he was finished, a real warrior. A young man like Brandon has saved his money and he’s comfortable. He says ‘I want to retire.’ I not only support him, I applaud him, because boxing is a very, very dangerous sport. It’s not something you do just to do. If you’ve made your money and decided not to fight anymore, I applaud that, because 20 years from now, he will be very, very happy he made that decision,” Arum said.

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“It’s time for me to say it’s over,” Rios said. “I’m all done.”

It often doesn’t mean much when professional fighters say they’re retiring after a disappointing loss like the one that Rios suffered last night. That’s why you have to remain skeptical that Rios will stay retired for long.

If he shorts on money, or if Arum decides he needs an opponent for one of his young stars like Terence Crawford, we could very well see Rios back in the future. But hopefully for Rios’ sake, he has more time to prepare for something like that, because he puts too much weight on when he’s out of the ring, and he can’t take that kind of weight off in just seven to eight weeks.

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Rios needs at least three to four good months to burn off 40 to 50 pounds of fat. If you do the math that’s going to take a long time to burn though that kind of fat in just three to five months’ time.

“That was the best Bradley I’ve ever seen, and we’ve had him for so many years,” Arum said.

Bradley looked good against Rios. The addition of new trainer Teddy Atlas seems to have really given Bradley the surge in motivation and discipline that he needed at this point in his career. Atlas had Bradley fighting smart and showing talent that he’s had in check.

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If Bradley had fought like this in his second fight against Manny Pacquiao, he might have beaten him. Bradley would have also made his fights against Diego Chaves and Ruslan Provodnikov a lot easier than they were.



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