By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten super featherweight prospect Brandon Rios (18-0-1, 12 KOs) fought to a disappointing 10-round majority draw with Manuel Perez (12-4-1, 2 KOs) on Friday night at the National Western Complex Arena, in Denver, Colorado. The final judges’ scores were 95-95, 95-95 and 94-96, for Perez. Rios, 22, came into the fight as one of the top prospects in the super featherweight division and a fighter that a lot of boxing fans had been looking at as a potential future world champion.
However, he struggled after getting off to a good start in the first two rounds of the fight, taking a lot of shots from the more aggressive, and believe it or not, the harder punching Perez. Rios came on in the end and turned what looked to be a win for Perez into a draw, but it wasn’t pretty.
Rios looked good in the first round, showed good form with his jabs and left hooks to the body of Perez. If the fight had stopped right here, one would have thought that Rios was destined to be a future champion. However, Perez showed no fear and took Rios’ best shots without slowing his forward progress. He made Rios work throughout, not letting him rest and forcing him to defend from his own shots. Going into the fight, Perez wasn’t considered a fighter with much power. However, he quickly showed that he was the harder puncher between him and Rios, pelting him often with good shots.
In the second round, Rios dominated most of the round behind his jab and left-right combinations. At one point, he hit Perez with a big left hand that sent him flying backwards towards the ropes. However, in the last 30 seconds of the round, Perez came on and landed a flurry of shots to the head of Rios and coming close to winning the round. In the 3rd round, Perez continued in where he ended the last round, hitting Perez with hard combinations and giving him big problems in doing so. He worked himself to the inside, where Rios was much less skilled, and began banging him with shots to the body and uppercuts to the head.
The 4th round was fairly close as both fighters traded shots, Perez, once again, was the much busier fighter and hit Rios with a lot of good shots. However, Rios came on in the last minute of the round and landed a lot of nice combinations to the head of Perez, turning his face red by the end of the round. Rios continued fighting well in rounds five and through seven, pressuring Perez constantly and hitting him with a never ending assortment of shots.
At this moment, Rios looked good once again, showing promise as a fighter, if not power. Rios stayed on top of Perez in rounds seven and eight, hitting him with uppercuts and hard body shots. Perez made it close by fighting hard in the last 30 seconds of the round and nailing Rios often. The judges’, at least some of them, possibly saw the round as going for Perez, but I thought Rios had done enough in the first two minutes to win it.
In rounds nine and ten, Rios continued throwing a lot of punches, and pressuring Perez. The problem was, Rios was throwing punches without much power, and just seemed to be throwing them out there just to score points. Perez, however, threw slightly less often but he focused on making his punches count by putting more power into them and throwing them with more technique. This was perhaps the reason why Rios may have lost these rounds with some of the judges, because he looked really sloppy at the end.