By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) is reporting that he’ll be fighting fellow Top Rank fighter, unbeaten light welterweight contender Mike Alvarado (33-0, 23 KO’s) on October 13th on the undercard of Nonito Donaire vs. TBA at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

Rios said on his twitter page today “Spoke to my manager and it’s official. I’m fighting Mike Alvarado 10/13 at HDC [Home Depot Center] in Carson, CA. Same card as @ Filipoflash [Nonito Donaire]. See you there.”

This isn’t exactly earth shattering news, because there had already been talk that Rios could be facing the 32-year-old Alvarado next, but now it’s academic. This is an excellent fight, by the way and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum had recently said that the Rios-Alvarado fight could end up being the main event in the October 13th card rather than Donaire’s fight.

Donaire is likely to fight 36-year-old former WBC super bantamweight champion Toshiaki Nishioka next on that card, and it’s understandable then why Arum would want to move the Alvarado-Rios fight as the main event because next to no one knows who Nishioka is in the United States. Trying to sell that fight will be a tough ask for Top Rank if that’s the main event.

Rios has been dealing with weight problems recently and looked awful in winning a questionable decision over Richard Abril last April. Rios won by a 12 round split decision but he looked to be the loser of that fight by a wide margin in the minds of many boxing fans and writers.

Alvarado is coming off of an exciting 10 round decision win over Mauricio Herrera last April. It was a back and forth war for 10 rounds and one of the best fights this year. Before that, Alvarado stopped Breidis Prescott in the 10th round last year in November in a come from behind win.