By Jason Kim: Robert Garcia, the trainer for Brandon Rios, wants him to get a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez next, according to examiner.com. Garcia is hoping that Top Rank and Rios’ adviser can make the Marquez fight coming up in the summer. The problem is the timing of such a bout couldn’t have come at the worst time with Rios winning a 12 round split decision against Richard Abril last Saturday night in Las Vegas.

You’d have to search far and wide to find people that saw Rios as the winner in that fight. That’s why it’s probably a really bad idea for Bob Arum, Rios’ promoter, to try and make that fight between Rios and Marquez right now. Arum can certainly ramrod the fight through and ignore the boxing public. He’s done it before with his fights between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito and Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey, to name just a couple examples of Arum going against what the public wants to see. But in this case it’s perhaps not a good time to ignore the public and put together a fight like this, because if Arum is thinking about Rios’ long term viability as a potential star, you don’t want to put him in with Marquez following a gift decision like the Richard Abril fight.

Rios isn’t in Marquez’s class because he’s lacking so many different areas a fighter. Rios is basically just a slugger that had a size advantage over his opposition when he fought at lightweight. Well, he can no longer make the weight for lightweight bouts, and his size advantage is gone now that he’s moving up in weight to the light welterweight division. Arum needs to put Rios in situations where he can succeed and build his name back up slowly but surely. Arum shouldn’t put him in with Marquez so boxing fans can see Rios get clowned even worse than he was last Saturday night. Marquez will beat him so bad that there won’t be a case where Rios can win another gift decision.

Garcia also should wake up see that Rios isn’t ready for Marquez. Garcia needs to focus on fixing Rios’ glaring flaws because it’s sad that he was sent out there against Abril with no ability to move his head, no jab and little in the way of fundamentals. Rios looked like a weak version of Antonio Margarito coming off of his three eye surgeries. Rios actually made that version of Margarito look good. That’s how bad Rios was against Abril. And Garcia wants Rios to fight to fight Marquez now?