By Eric Thomas: for one of the rare times in his career former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) will be the smaller and arguably weaker fighter this Saturday night in his WBO 140 pound eliminator bout against Mike Alvarado (33-0, 23 KO’s) at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California.

Rios, 26, has been the bigger guy for virtually his entire eight year pro career, and has gotten over by being able to fight at in the lightweight division and then rehydrate up to near junior middleweight levels. He’s obviously going to be rehydrating up high in weight on Saturday night, but the difference here is that he’ll be facing someone in 32-year-old Alvarado who will be doing the exact same thing and they both should end up fairly close in weight but with Alvarado definitely being the bigger guy.

The vacant WBO Latino light welterweight title will be on the line for this fight. That title is a mere trinket, though, as the title that they both have their sights set on is the WBO light welterweight title which belongs to Juan Manuel Marquez at this time.

Rios is easily coming off his worst fight of his career in winning a controversial 12 round split decision last April against Richard Abril. Rios looked clueless against the Mayweather-esque Abril and he never really got into the fight. Abril just dominated Rios and make him and the judges who scored a 12 round split decision for Rios look bad. It was one of the most-sided fights I’ve ever seen where the decision was given to the wrong guy. It’s pretty sad the job the judges did in scoring this fight, because Rios was lucky if he won three rounds in that fight.

Before Abril dominated him, Rios used to be a good fighter at lightweight, but he’s been on his way downhill since his fight with John Murray last year in December.