By Dan Ambrose: 34-year-old former WBO light welterweight champion Mike Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs) may be in hot water after an arrest last Saturday night for gun possession in Denver, Colorado.
Alvarado was pulled over due to an outstanding felony warrant. The police later found the handgun in his glove department, according to ESPN. Alvarado is a convicted felon, so the handgun being in his car was a no-no. The good news is that the arrest isn’t expected to interrupt his scheduled fight against Brandon Rios (32-2-1, 23 KOs) later this month on January 24th at the 1stBank Center, in Bloomfield, Colorado, USA.
The Rios-Alvarado fight will be the third fight between them, and it’ll be televised by HBO. If it’s an exciting fight then you can expect their promoter Bob Arum to eventually match them up against each other again as long as the fan interest is still there. There last fight against each other in March of 2013 really wasn’t that interesting due to the constant movement that Alvarado used to out-box the slow moving Rios.
Alvarado was pulled over at 4:15 last Saturday night, and that’s when the gun was found in his glove department of his Hummer by the police. Alvarado was also found to have an expired registration for his vehicle. It’s unclear why Alvarado was driving around a vehicle with an expired registration.
After his arrest, Alvarado was released on a $41,500 bond. He’ll now have to deal with the legal issues that surround him now. The felony warrant and being in possession of a firearm could get Alvarado in hot water.
“We don’t condone what happened in any way and we respect the authorities. That said, we don’t anticipate a problem with the show and it is still scheduled to go ahead on Jan. 24. After that, Mike will have to deal with the legal issues,” said Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
Top Rank obviously put a lot of money into the marketing of the Rios-Alvarado 3 fight, and it wouldn’t be a good thing to see it canceled right now with the fight less than three weeks away.
One can only imagine which fighter Top Rank is pulling for in the Rios-Alvarado fight. With Alvarado potentially facing jail time over the gun possession, it could limit what they can do with him if he’s given a stint in jail for any length of time.
If Rios wins the fight, then Top Rank can go ahead and match him up against other fighters in their stable, although it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be getting a second fight against Manny Pacquiao any time soon.
The two fighters have split the first two fights with Rios winning their first clash in 2012 by a 7th round knockout, and then Alvarado defeating him in their second fight in 2013 by beating him by a 12 round decision.
Rios has since lost a 12 round decision to Pacquiao. He then beat Diego Chaves by a 9th round disqualification in his last fight. Rios looked terrible in both fights and clearly deserved to lose to Chaves if not for the disqualification.
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