By Jeff Sorby: Former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-0, 23 KO’s) is being talked about fighting Mike Alvarado again in a rematch on March 30th. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes boxing fans are craving for this fight, so he plans on putting them back together.
Rios stopped Alvarado in the 7th round last October. However, Rios is very interested in getting fights against the likes of Zab Judah, Danny Garcia and Lucas Matthysse. The problem is all of those fighters are with Golden Boy Promotions, and he’s with Top Rank.
The chances of Golden Boy volunteering to give him a shot against one of their fighters might not be too good right now. Perhaps this is why we’re seeing Arum putting Rios back in with Alvarado. That move also seems like Arum doesn’t have any other ideas for Rios, so he’s going back over old ground. Hopefully, Rios doesn’t get stuck fighting Alvarado four of five times like how Manny Pacquiao keeps fighting Juan Manuel Marquez. It would be a waste of Rios’ career if that’s all Arum has for him.
Rios said to RingTV.com “I would fight Lucas Matthysse…but he’s with Golden Boy. There are a lot of 140 pounders I would like to fight, but they’re with Golden Boy and not with Top Rank, so that does kind of wreck it a little bit.”
A little bit? I’d say it wrecks it a lot of bit. That’s the whole the thing about this Top Rank vs. Golden Boy thing. With the two promotional companies rarely matching their fighters against one another, it’s turned the two stables into something similar to club fighting where all the guys fight just the people in their own club. That’s pretty dead because you start to see the same guys fighting each other over and over again, especially if their fight makes money. The sport is becoming smaller this way with less interesting fights.