By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum got help by senator Harry Reid in getting the visa for Brandon Rios’ opponent for Saturday Diego Chaves (23-1, 19 KOs), according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Arum contacted Reid when it appeared that Chaves wasn’t going to be able to get his visa in time due to a backlog of visas at the U.S immigration services.
Chaves is traveling from his home country of Argentina to face Rios in a fight televised by HBO at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
“We had Harry Reid’s office helping us with the consulate in Buenos Aires,” Arum said to Dan Rafael of EPN. “We got a call from Sen. Reid’s office that the visa was cleared. Sen. Reid knows this is an important event for Las Vegas and his office went to bat on it and accomplished a miracle.”
I’m not sure how big of an event the Rios vs. Chaves card is for Las Vegas. The Cosmopolitan holds only 3,000 fans, so it’s not as if we’re talking about a venue for 19,000 fans. 3,000 fans coming to Las Vegas is nothing compared to when you’ve got a major card with Floyd Mayweather Jr or Manny Pacquiao coming into town.
It’s good that the Rios-Chaves fight will take place because that’s pretty much the only good fight on the entire card. The co-feature bout is WBA light welterweight champion Jessie Vargas vs. Anton Novikov. That’s not a great fight because there are arguably many better contenders than Novikov, and this is just a safe fight for Vargas instead of a fight where he’d have a chance of losing his title.
If Vargas were matched against guys like Viktor Postol, Lucas Matthysse, Adrien Broner, John Molina, or Ruslan Provodnikov, then you could get excited about this fight, but Novikov is not someone that can compete with Vargas in this fight. It’s just a case of good match-making by Arum.
Rios-Chaves fight might be a good one if Chaves looks better than he did in his loss to Keith Thurman last year. Chaves ran out of gas after 6 rounds and took a beating. If that happens on Saturday night then Rios will easily win this fight after having a few rough rounds in the first part of the fight. Chaves has good power but the stamina isn’t there, and he’s not rugged enough to go fight in a long distance war.
Arum has likely done his research well on Chaves to make sure that he’s not someone that can beat his guy Rios.
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