Alvarado decisions Rios in upset; Crawford defeats Prescott

By Boxing News - 03/30/2013 - Comments

rios1By Jim Dower: Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) took a beating on Saturday night in getting out-boxed by Mike Alvarado (34-1, 23 KO’s) in losing by a 12 round unanimous decision at the at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Rios hurt Alvarado early in the fight with a jab, but he was unable to finish him off. After that, Alvarado took control of the fight and was able to hurt Rios on several occasions with big right hands to the head in winning the fight by the scores of 115-113, 115-113 and 114-113.

Alvarado ended up with bad swelling around both eyes as well as a cut on the side of his left eye. Rios’ left eye was badly swollen.

Rios was clearly hurt in the 8th round when Alvarado tagged him with a hard right hand that had him looking unsteady on his feet. You could tell when Rios would get hurt because he would stop punching and he had a sick look on his face.

As the fight wore on, Alvarado figured out how to control Rios’ pressure by moving around the ring constantly and picking spots to throw his combinations. This hadn’t been working in the first three rounds of the fight with Alvarado unable to keep Rios off of him. However, after Rios tired a little, and perhaps was a little beaten up from the heavy shots he’d been hit with, it became easier for Alvarado to control his pressure.

Alvarado looked like he had the fight fully under control going into the 11th round, but Rios was able to land some hard shots and come back in that round. Unfortunately for him, Alvarado came back strong in the 12th round to land some big shots to control the round.

After the fight, Rios said he wants an immediate rematch and Alvarado agreed to give him one.

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In the co-feature, boxing fans had to put up with a boring fight filled with tons of running and jabbing from lightweight Terrence Crawford (20-0, 15 KO’s), who ran his way to a 10 round unanimous decision over Breidis Prescott (27-4, 20 KO’s). The judges scored the fight 99-91, 97-93 and 100-90. I had Prescott winning the fight 7 rounds to 3 based on his aggression and much better power.

The fans were booing the fight from the 1st round because of Crawford’s lack of offense. They wanted to see him mix it up, but all he did for the first 8 rounds was jab and throw occasional counter shots. It was awfully boring to watch.

It looks like HBO is going to be showing a lot of Crawford’s fights from now on because the crew was saying he looked superb, and weren’t commenting on the fact that the crowd was booing him from the 1st round. I can’t remember ever seeing a crowd boo a fighter more than they were booing Crawford, and it seemed comical that HBO was ignoring the boos and saying how exciting Crawford was. He wasn’t exciting unless your idea of excitement is watching paint dry on a fence. I agreed with the crowd that it wasn’t an interesting fight, and that’s not because of Prescott. He was the only one trying to make it a fight.

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Other boxing results on the card:

Jose Ramirez TKO 1 Charle Dubray
Michael Finney TKO 5 Osvaldo Rojas
Tremaine Williams UD 4 John Herrera
Brett Rather UD 4 Juan Guajardo
Juan Heraldez UD 4 Roberto Lopez
Manuel Lopez TKO 2 Jason Tresvan



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