By Dan Ambrose: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) took an advantage of an overweight 170 pound Brandon Rios (33-3-1, 24 KOs) in the 9th round in dropping him twice in the 9th with body shots to get a KO win at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. What was interesting after the fight was the talk of Bradley potentially fighting Saul “Canelo” Alvarez next if he beats WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto. There was no talk from HBO about Bradley or Canelo fighting Gennady Golovkin. That was amusing.
Bradley was dropped by a hard body shot. He beat the count barely, but then he was immediately pounced on by Bradley, who continued to attack Rios’ soft midsection until he hit the canvas for the second and final time. Referee Tony Weeks then stopped the fight at 2:49 of the 9th round.
It wasn’t so much Bradley looking good, it was more of a case of Bradley being with a terrible fighter and one that was badly over-weight in Rios. We weren’t looking at the best welterweights in the ring tonight in the 147lb division in my view. I rate Bradley at No.9 or No.10 in the division. His promoters at Top Rank have done a good job of disguising Bradley’s lack of size, power and talent in the division by matching him against guys like Jessie Vargas, Diego Chaves, Rios and Manny Pacquiao.
After the fight, Rios, 29, said that he was going to retire from boxing because he says he doesn’t have it anymore and he doesn’t want to hurt himself or his family.
“I’m done, that’s it,” Rios said after the fight. “I had a good run. [Expletive] it!I think it’s time to hang up my gloves,” Rios said.
Rios soundly like he was about to cry when he told HBO analyst Max Kellerman that he was going to retire.
I seriously doubt that Rios will retire from the sport now. I think his promoter, 83-year-old Bob Arum, will offer him a payday of somewhere along the lines of $800,000 to come back and fight Jessie Vargas. Arum said this week that he wanted to match the loser of the Bradley-Rios fight against Vargas, and the winner of the fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. I shudder to think of what would happen to a light puncher like Bradley against Canelo. Bradley only looked good tonight was because he was facing an awful fighter in Rios. If you put Bradley in with a good welterweight like Errol Spence, Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman, he would have taken a beating tonight and likely been knocked out, even if he chose to hold and move all night long. Canelo is just WAY too big and strong for Bradley. Canelo rehydrates to a strong 175, not a flabby 170 like we saw with Rios tonight. Canelo would have a 20 pound weight advantage over Bradley, who rehydrated to 155 for his fight tonight. Just imagine what it would be like for Canelo to have a 20 pound weight advantage over a light hitter like Bradley. It would be a circus-like total mismatch.
Rios struggled to make weight during Friday’s weigh-in. He missed the weight by coming in at 147.2. He finally did make the weight less than an hour later. However, he looked totally weight-drained like it had really killed him to get down to the weigh-in limit. For tonight’s fight, Rios rehydrated 23 pounds to come into the fight at 170. That’s obviously too much weight for someone like Rios to be weighing for a fight. I know Saul “Canelo” Alvarez routinely rehydrates 20 pounds for his fights at junior middleweight, but he’s younger than Rios and has a knack for doing this. Rios obviously couldn’t do it, and you could tell by the 3rd round, Rios was already tired and lethargic looking.
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