By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-0-1, 23 KO’s) doesn’t think his opponent Mike Alvarado (33-1, 23 KO’s) is disciplined enough to change for their rematch on March 30th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Rios sees Alvarado as only being able to change briefly from their last fight in October of last year, and then he sees Alvarado reverting back to his slugging style of fighting and going toe-to-toe with him until the end of the fight.
Rios said to RingTV: “I think he’s going to try and use his reach, but it depends on how long he can keep it up for. I say one or two rounds. After that, he’s going to turn out just like the first fight. One or two rounds, he was on the outside. After that, it’ll turn into another dogfight. It’ll be the same way.”
Alvarado has said it himself that he’s got to fight with discipline this time around because he made a mistake of trying to slug with Rios last time. Alvarado believes he can stay disciplined in the rematch, and focus on selectively slugging it out with Rios from time to time instead of going toe-to-toe with him and risking getting knocked out like last time he fought him.
Alvarado did well against last time out for five rounds, and was getting the better of the action going into the 6th round. However, Rios hurt Alvarado with a big right hand in the 6th that caused him to back up. From there, Rios realized that he had the fight in hand and he then went out and stopped Alvarado in the next round.
If Alvarado can box Rios, he can definitely win this fight because he’s got the height and reach advantage. However, it’s going to be tough on him to do that because his entire career he’s been a slugger, and it won’t be easy for him to resist his natural instincts to slug.
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