By Chris Williams: Former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) is promising his October 13th fight against unbeaten light welterweight contender Mike Alvarado (33-0, 23 KO’s) when the two fighters go at it in the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California.

Rios said this as quoted by fightnews.com “It’s going to be a bloody, violent fight. It’s not going the distance.”

I sure hope not, because I don’t want to see another one of Rios’ fights go to a decision after watching his last one against Richard Abil last April. Rios won the fight by a controversial 12 round split decision, but that has got to be the worst decision I’ve ever seen before. Rios looked completely clueless for 12 rounds, missing shots over and over again, and yet winning rounds.

Judges Jerry Roth and Glenn Trowbridge scored the fight for Rios by the scores 116-112 and 115-113 respectively. I only gave Rios two rounds and thought he looked awful. Rios has since blamed his bad performance on him struggling to make weight for the fight. However, I think he simply met his match and didn’t have an answer for Abril’s slick defensive skills and pinpoint Mayweather-esque shots.

Alvarado is really going to take the fight to Rios and this is going to be baptism under fire for Rios. It’s kind of a crazy idea for him to fight a slugger like Alvarado in his first fight at light welterweight given how poorly Rios fought last time out. It’s surprising that Rios’ promoters at Top Rank agreed to allow him to fight Alvarado.

Of course, Top Rank will do well either way because this is an in house fight and they’re win no mater which fighter comes out on top. However, Rios is the bigger name and it’ll no doubt hurt more if he gets knocked out by Alvarado or outpointed. Rios was said to be someone that Bob Arum wanted to match against Manny Pacquiao at some point in the future. With his last performance against Abril it would be a laugh if Arum dragged Rios out for a fight against Pacquiao anytime soon.