by Dan Ambrose: Former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) will be looking to quiet his legion of doubters and critics in his upcoming October 13th fight against #1 WBO, #3 IBF Mike Alvarado (33-0, 23 KO’s) in a World Boxing Organization light welterweight title eliminator at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The winner of the Rios-Alvarado fight will become the mandatory challenger for WBO light welterweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez.
I have strong doubts that Rios or Alvarado will end up facing Marquez, because it’s more likely that Marquez could retire after his 4th fight with Manny Pacquiao on December 8th of this year. Marquez won’t need a fight against the likes of Alvarado or Rios because they bring very little to the table financially because neither has much of a fan base.
Rios-Alvarado will be the co-main even on the Nonito Donaire vs. Toshiki Nishioka fight. It doesn’t quite make sense to have that fight as the main event, however, when casual boxing fans don’t have a clue who Nishioka is other than some guy from Japan who at one time held the WBC super bantamweight title. Not a lot of excitement for the Donaire-Nishioka fight.
Rios, #4 WBO, #6 IBF, is coming off of what could easily be called the worst before of his career in beating Richard Abril by a 12 round decision decision last April. Boxing fans were pretty much united in seeing Rios as the loser in that fight and were disappointed when the judges gave it to him. It’s not that boxing fans dislike Rios or anything like that. They seem to like him and his fighting style quite a bit. The issue that fans had was that Rios was badly dominated by Abril that he appeared to win only 2 to 3 rounds in the entire 12 round fight with Abril winning the rest. I’ve seen the fight several times and I can never give Rios more than 2 rounds because he was so badly schooled in that fight by Abril.
Rios is in a position where he could pick up the WBO title in the near future if Marquez elects to vacate the belt after the Pacquiao fight. Hopefully, Rios doesn’t beat Alvarado by a questionable decision like he did in the Abril fight, because he could see what remaining fans of his storming out like rats from a sinking ship. Rios has to win without controversy this time because he can’t continue to look awful and win decisions that boxing fans don’t agree with if he wants to become a star.