By Dan Ambrose: You knew the excuses from Brandon Rios would be coming sooner or later and sure enough, Rios is blaming his poor performance last night against Richard Abril due to his struggles to make 135. Does it sound plausible? Maybe. It depends on how good Rios looks in his next fight at 140 in the new three to four months.

Rios said this to Inthiscornertv.com “I won the fight. I pulled out the decision. I won the last round. You can’t win a fight by holding…What affected me was my weight…Whoever they put in front of me, that doesn’t affect me. My weight affected me kind of. I wasn’t myself tonight in my struggles to make 135.”

There it is, folks. Rios is now blaming his poor performance against Abril on his weight. I frankly don’t buy it. He didn’t struggle because of weight issues, he struggled because of what Abril was doing in the ring. Rios was like a bigger version of Antonio Margarito, incapable of dealing with a fighter that moves a little and who smothers his attack with clinching.

We saw Margarito easily beaten by Shane Mosley in Mosley’s last win back in January 2009 when Mosley used a punch and grab style to beat Margarito. Now we just saw Abril use more or less the same style against Rios, a Margarito type fighter and it worked with perfection. Abril won that fight, although two of the judges gave it to Rios for some reason. Contrary to what Rios say about him winning the 12th round, I had Abril winning the final round of the fight. I didn’t see Rios even coming close to winning the last round. I thought Rios won the 10th round, but not the final two.

Rios fought poorly because he can’t handle movement and doesn’t have the skills to fight on the inside. If you look at the guys that his promoter Bob Arum had matched Rios up against prior to the Abril fight, it’s always been guys that stood in front of him and made it easy. Miguel Acosta was a slight exception, but he blew it by trying to trade with Rios too much and that cost him the fight. Abril was able to dominate Rios by picking off his punches and then using his reach to jab and stick him with right hands from the outside. Rios’ weight was not the reason why he was beaten by Abril. He was beaten because he didn’t have the skills to compete. The judges decision means nothing because the boxing community has nullified the win by ignoring it and seeing it as a loss. The judges did Rios no favor by giving him the decision. They as will have given him the loss because no one respects the judges’ decision for this fight.