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Rios, Alvarado ready for third chapter
— -- WESTMINSTER, Colo. -- For 19 rounds through their first two epic fights, Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios blasted each other around the ring in hellacious slugfests that were thrilling fight of the year candidates.
Yet despite the inhuman brutality they have dished out to each other, once the fights were over they had nothing but admiration and respect for each other. Smiles, hugs and high-fives all around.
"We are cool outside the ring but once we get in that ring we hate each other," Rios said. "We want to kill each other and that's what makes this sport and that's what makes these fights more exciting because everyone thinks that these guys are too close, they have fun together. But once they get in the ring they kill each other. It's like the Army. All of the soldiers are your brothers. Alvarado is like my brother and we fight. We fight until somebody gets hurt."
Boxing is funny like that: Two fighters can relentlessly hammer away at each other for pride, money and glory, yet laugh, joke and hug it out when it's over.
Sometimes, fighters develop a deep hatred of each other, especially after a series of battles. Think Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera, the great Mexican warriors, who probably still would prefer not to be in the same room even though it has been a decade since their famed trilogy concluded.
On the other hand, there was Micky Ward and the late Arturo Gatti, who became best friends by the time their memorable trilogy was over.
The thing about Alvarado and Rios is that as each chapter of their rivalry has unfolded, they have gotten to like each other more and more. They didn't really know each other before the first fight. Now, with the much-anticipated welterweight rubber match on Saturday night (HBO, 9:45 ET/PT) at 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, a suburb of Denver -- Alvarado's hometown -- they are like old chums.
"The best trilogies are the ones where the fighters respect one another so much that they consider each other friends," said Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who promotes Alvarado and Rios. "After the trilogy is over they continue to be friends. We saw that with Gatti and Ward. Before Gatti's untimely death [in 2009] they were really close. I'm sure Mike and 'Bam Bam' will be close for the rest of their lives because they have been through hell together."
Whether it was Rios getting down on one knee and playfully proposing marriage to Alvarado at the kickoff news conference last month, or the fist bumps they exchanged at Thursday's final news conference, it's clear these guys like each other, which makes it all the more astonishing, considering what they are likely going to do to each other again.
"I am so ready for Chapter 3," Rios said. "This is the ending the fans have been waiting for and I promise you they will not be disappointed."
"It's gonna be a classic fight that goes down in history," Alvarado promised. "Fighting Brandon Rios has and continues to be an honor. This is a trilogy fans will remember for a very long time. We are entertainers and our fight on [Saturday] will be the grand finale. I intend to start the fireworks early in the fight."
If it's even close to their first two, it will be yet another treat.
"This will be the best fight of the trilogy, as it should be," Rios said.
In the co-feature, up-and-coming Mexican super middleweight Gilberto Ramirez (30-0, 24 KOs), a 23-year-old charismatic southpaw puncher, will make his HBO debut in a scheduled 10-round bout against Maxim Vlasov (30-1, 15 KOs), 28, of Russia, who has won 11 fights in a row.
In October 2012, Rios (32-2-1, 23 KOs) stopped Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs) in the seventh round in Carson, California, in an extremely violent junior welterweight fight. In an immediate rematch in March 2013, Alvarado, 34, exacted revenge in Las Vegas by winning a close unanimous decision and a vacant interim junior welterweight title as he brawled early on, then boxed just enough in the second half of the fight to edge Rios, 28, of Oxnard, California, in another ferocious battle.
Even with all the punishment they have doled out, there has been no trash talk for any of their fights, and they have no problem admitting that they like each other.
As Rios said this week: "There is no animosity between Mike and me. We are cool. We are the same kind of people. We are the same person. We know what it takes to be where we are at. We both have our problems outside the ring and we both have our problems inside the ring. We know that and at the end of the day we are both the same person.
"We are both from the 'hood. We both grew up like that. We understand 'real' and we recognize 'real,' and that's what we are -- we are real fighters."
Alvarado echoed the sentiment.
"Brandon said it pretty clear. We have nothing against each other and once we get in the ring we know what we gotta do," he said. "We know what type of fight we are getting into with each other. That is the warrior that is going to come out of us that night because we know what kind of fighters we are. We both have heart and power and we are both warriors. There is no reason for us to add more to it. Everybody know what kind of fight they are going to get out of us. We didn't get to this third fight against each other by accident."
Asked if they considered each other friends, Alvarado said: "I would say we are. We don't really communicate on a day-to-day basis, but when we see each other we are cool and have that mutual respect and we understand each other."
"I feel the same way too," Rios said. "Like he said, we don't talk a lot but once we see each other, of course, we are going to shake each other's hand and joke around while we see each other. I live in California and he lives in Denver so it is hard to communicate. We do have that mutual respect for everything that we do inside the ring and outside of the ring."
Arum promoted all three Barrera-Morales fights and saw the legitimate bad blood between them up close, which led to vicious fights. So why was it so bad between them, yet rivals such as Alvarado and Rios can have such huge respect for each other?
"They were different people," Arum said of Barrera and Morales. "They came from different social strata in Mexico. Barrera was much more Spanish and Morales had a lot more Indian blood. They taunted each other with that. There was a lot of animosity and, unfortunately, there still is. But these guys [Alvarado and Rios] are like two peas in the pod.
"They are really alike. They are fun-loving guys, who when they get in the ring are absolutely fearsome."
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