By Chris Williams: After his one-sided shellacking at the hands of Manny Pacquiao last November in Macao, China, Brandon Rios (31-2-1, 23 KO’s) is now hoping to get a shot against WBO light welterweight champion Ruslan Provodnikov (23-2, 16 KO’s) next if his Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will agree to make the fight happen.
Rios has lost his last 2 fights in defeats against Mike Alvarado and Pacquiao, and Rios was given a very controversial victory over Richard Abril last year in April in Las Vegas, Nevada. Why Rios would get a title shot or even any kind of fight against Provodnikov is the big question. If a Rios-Provodnikov fight did get made, you can bet that it would end up on Pacquiao’s undercard of his next fight on April 12th next year in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Provodnikov said on his twitter:
Provodnikov said on his twitter “Brandon Rios, I agree to make fight. I’m ready.”
Rios said “Ruslan Provodnikov, yes sir. Me too, so let make it happen.”
I don’t think this is a good fight for Provodnikov. If he can’t get the Pacquiao payday fight in April, which I don’t think he will because he’s too dangerous, then he shouldn’t be wasting his time making Rios more popular by giving him an undeserved fight. What about the top contenders vying for the WBO 140 lb. title, like Juan Manuel Marquez and Lucas Matthysse? They’re waiting for title shots and I think either of them would be a much better option than Rios. I know Marquez and Matthysse are both coming off of losses too, but at least they haven’t been beaten in their last two fights like Rios. They also don’t have a controversial win over Richard Abril.
Provodnikov can do a lot better than wasting his time on fighting Rios. If you’re going to fight guys, then at least fight people that aren’t coming off of bad beatings like Rios. That’s making it too easy for Rios. With him losing his last two fights, he should have to work his way back to a title shot rather than having a title shot handed to him on a silver platter.
If the Rios-Provodnikov is going to be the co-feature for Pacquiao’s next fight on April 12th, then I can see this card ending up as a fail with it bringing in less than 500,000 PPV buys again. Arum needs to start getting interesting undercard fights for Pacquiao’s cards to try and make up for the less than interesting main events. Marquez already said no to the Pacquiao 5th fight, so you can forget the card bringing in 1 million buys. That means Arum needs to stack the undercard with quality fights to make up for what will likely be a boring fight between Pacquiao and Tim Bradley.
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