Sports

Rios-Alvarado II a winner

Top Rank boxing promoter Bob Arum normally doesn’t like to stage an immediate rematch after a brutal fight. But he’s making an exception for Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado.

Five months after a slugfest won by Rios on a seventh-round TKO, the two will meet again Saturday night for the interim junior welterweight title at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. HBO will televise the bout.

“Brandon and Mike know one thing,” Arum said, “they know how to fight and they know how to bring it. It’s great for the fans.”

Referee Pat Russell stopped the first fight, held Oct. 13 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., after Alvarado endured a barrage of unanswered punches in the seventh round. Up to that point, it had been an even give-and-take fight. The scoring reflected the closeness of the bout: two judges had it scored 57-57 after six rounds, while the other favored Rios 58-56.

Rios (31-0-1, 23 KOs) and Alvarado (33-1, 23 KOs) can’t wait to take up where they left off.

“We are warriors and if you are a warrior, you want to fight again and again and again,” Rios said. “It is never too soon. The first fight was great. I feel great and I’m ready for another battle.”

Alvarado said: “I can’t wait for the chance to redeem myself from the first fight and it is a fight that everyone wants to see. So it’s fight on.”

Despite losing the first fight, Alvarado isn’t planning to change his strategy or style and doesn’t expect the second fight to be much different than the first, when the two brawlers stood toe-to-toe and didn’t rest for a second.

“You can always train differently to try to change things up,” Alvarado said, “but I think our styles and the way we approach the ring, it’s automatically going to turn into that kind of fight.”

This is the first fight HBO will broadcast since announcing it would no longer do business with Golden Boy Promotions. Tonight’s bout is promoted by Top Rank, which figures to provide HBO with the bulk of its future boxing programming. So as much as tonight’s fight is about Rios vs. Alvarado, it also HBO vs. Showtime, and Top Rank vs. Golden Boy. Each will be trying to outdo the other.

Top Rank and HBO staged the exciting brawl between Timothy Brady and Ruslan Provodnikov two weeks ago, won by Bradley, and Arum is confident Rios-Alvarado II and future matches will live up to a standard of quality action fights.

“Fans aren’t stupid,” Arum said. “They want to see action. Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios are action fighters. Timothy Bradley showed that he is an action fighter. Juan Manuel Marquez is an action fighter. Manny Pacquiao is an action fighter. Ruslan Provodnikov is an action fighter. They don’t play around. They don’t dance around. They fight.

“That’s what the public wants to see, so we’ll mix and match as we go along because they are the big fights that people want to see.”

* WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (25-0, 22KO’s) defends his title against former world champion Nobuhiro Ishida (24-8-2, 9KO’s) today at the Monte Carlo SBM Hotel and Casino in Monaco. The card will be distributed in the United States on PPV by Integrated Sports Media for live viewing at 3:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. PT on both cable and satellite pay-per-view.

* Not sure what Robert Guerrero was thinking bringing his gun to New York. He faces serious charges though his next hearing will be after his May 4 bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Las Vegas.

Showtime captured Guerrero declaring his gun at JFK and his subsequent arrest and arraignment. It should make for compelling viewing during the All-Access show lead-up to the bout. But it tarnishes the feel-good story Guerrero built up during a media blitz that includeed appearances on several Christian oriented shows, ESPN and Good Morning America.