By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten light welterweight contender Mike Alvarado (33-0, 23 KO’s) and former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) will be fighting it out for the vacant WBO Latino light welterweight title on Saturday night at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California, USA.

In addition to the WBO Latino 140 lb title being on the line the fight will also a WBO light welterweight eliminator bout to decide who will be the mandatory challenger for WBO champ Juan Manuel Marquez.

While the Alvarado-Rios fight will be an undercard fight the winner of this bout won’t have to fight on an undercard if they’re able to get a fight against Marquez. However, it’s still up in the air whether Marquez will even bother to defend his WBO title against Alvarado or Rios because they don’t bring much to the table in terms of big money at this still early point in their careers.

Rios has to win back all the boxing fans he lost in his last fight against Richard Abril last April when Rios was totally dominated by Richard Abril, yet still won a controversial 12 round decision. As terrible as he was, Rios made it worse for himself by saying that he thought he won and failing to understand how countless amounts of people saw him losing badly.

Alvarado said to RingTV “I love toe-to-toe brawls…I can slug it out with Brandon Rios all night long and be the bigger, stronger man…But I can also control the fight with my skills.”

If I were Alvarado I wouldn’t try and make any huge changes in his fighting style for this bout, because I’ve never seen him box anyone, ever. Alvarado has always slugged it out with his opponents in exciting fights against Breidis Prescott and Mauricio Herrera. If he tries to box the smaller Rios to a decision I think it’ll go badly for him.

Alvarado must have watched Rios’ fightw with Abril one too many times and got the assunmption that he can do the same thing that Abril did. He can’t. Abril is a much better defensive fighter with Mayweather-like skills, whereas Alvarado is more of a crude brawler who wins by that style alone.