Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (32-2-1, 23 KOs) won’t be going back and clearing up the huge controversy surrounding his 9th round disqualification win over Diego Chaves from earlier this month. Instead, Rios is being matched up by his promoters at Top Rank against former WBO light welterweight champion Ruslan Provodnikov (23-3, 16 KOs) this November, according to Boxingsphere. The negotiations are underway right now between the two fighter’s management.
Rios was on his way to losing to Diego Chaves when referee Vic Drakulitch stepped in and stopped the fight in the 9th round following a head-lock that Chaves had put on Rios. It was later learned that Drakulich had disqualified Chaves for throwing an elbow at some point in the 9th round. It didn’t take place at the time of the stoppage because Chaves didn’t throw an elbow.
Rios was also involved in a controversial fight in 2012 when he was given a 12 round decision win over Richard Abril in a fight that many boxing fans saw Abril winning quite easily. If you count the Arbil and Chaves fights at defeats, Rios has 4 losses on his resume, and has lost 4 out of his last 6 fights.
Rios would be well on his way to becoming a journeyman level fighter if the Abril and Chaves fights didn’t turn out the way they did. He’s obviously quite fortunate with the scoring in the Abril fight, and with Drakulich stopping a fight he was in the process of losing against Chaves.
Provodnikov, as limited as he is as a fighter, has to be seen as the favorite against Rios. As long as Provodnikov doesn’t run out of gas, he’s going to likely give Rios a bad beating and possibly stop him for the first time. Rios is too much of a punching bag to have much of a chance in this fight unless we have another strange fight where the referee chooses to disqualify Provodnikov while he’s head in the fight and on his way to beating Rios.
Provodnikov lost his WBO title in his last fight in getting beaten by Chris Algieri by a 12 round split decision last June at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Provodnikov knocked Algieri down twice in the 1st round with big power shots, but unfortunately for Provodnikov, he was unable to finish Algieri off.
This allowed Algieri to get on his bike and win the remaining 11 rounds by using movement, a good jab and quick combinations to get the better of the slow-footed Provodnikov. This was a fight where Provodnikov’s trainer Freddie Roach was unable to assist Provodnikov in the fight. Roach later said that he would have had Provodnikov throwing combinations rather than loading up on single shots the way that Provodnikov was doing against Algieri.
