By Eric Thomas: Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-0-1, 23 KO’s) and Mike Alvarado (33-1, 23 KO’s) are in play for a rematch on March 30th, according to a Rios interview at diamondboxing.com. Rios would much prefer to get a big money fight against Manny Pacquiao instead.
However, it’s looking like his promoter Bob Arum will choose to put Pacquiao back in with Juan Manuel Marquez due to the high interest in the fight. But if Pacquiao doesn’t face Marquez next, Rios will likely be the guy that gets the fight rather than a fighter outside of Top Rank. When and if that opportunity comes, Rios is more than ready to take it. He wants the Pacquiao badly and he’ll take it any way he can get it.
As for the Rios-Alvarado II fight, Rios already beat Alvarado by a 7th round knockout last October in Carson, California. The fight was an exciting one, which is why Arum is interested in putting them back together again.
No doubt another reason why he wants to put the rematch together is because he promotes both guys, so he wins no matter what. If Arum matched Rios against a non-Top Rank fighter, he’d be putting him at risk while at the same time helping the other fighter become better known. Arum prefers to increase the popularity of his own fighters rather than helping other promoters in building up their fighters’ names.
Rios is a good fighter but it’s questionable whether he would beat guys like Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, Adrien Broner and Lucas Matthysse. All of those fighters are promoted by Golden Boy, and that is probably enough to where we’ll never see Rios fight any of them during his career unless he leaves Top Rank.
There’s not much suspense involved with an Alvarado-Rios rematch. Rios proved pretty clearly that he’s the better fighter than Alvarado last October, and it seems kind of redundant to match them back up again so soon without Alvarado or Rios having faced anyone in between.