AGAINST THE ROPES
Ex-lightweight world champion Rios has plenty riding on welterweight title fight with Bradley
It’s all Brandon Rios can think about.
Win Saturday against World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Timothy Bradley Jr., and he wears a world-title belt again and gets another big money fight next year.
Lose, and he’s staring at a career pocked by three defeats in his last five fights.
“Devastation,” Rios said of the latter scenario.
“If I lose, this could be it for my career. I’m not going to fight for $30,000, or fight on TruTV, Telefutura, Fox, whatever … they won’t pay me what I want. … All I’ve ever done is boxing, so it’s a scary thing to think about. My wife and I talked about this two months ago. She asked what would happen if I lose.”
An extended silence followed.
“I was thinking, thinking, thinking … honestly, I don’t even know what I’d do. I’m scared. I can’t think about it.”
That explains why Rios (33-2-1, 24 knockouts), a for-
mer lightweight world champion, is determined to beat Bradley (32-1-1, 12 KOs) at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
This version of Rios, at 29, is far more settled than the street kid who went to train under Robert Garcia in Oxnard with much of the edge remaining from a youth spent “poor, hungry and hustling” in Kansas, as Rios put it.
Since then, Rios has done plenty of growing up. He has been touched by the presence of his five children, by his marriage to a psychologist five years ago, and by those two losses.
Two years ago this month, Rios was routed in a unanimous-decision loss to Manny Pacquiao in China. That went a long way toward helping him shed his cockiness.
“Getting the Pacquiao fight, I did get a little bigheaded, thinking I was untouchable,” Rios said. “After the fight, all the yes men were nowhere to be found, so I talked to my wife [Vicky]. … She pointed out stuff, picked at my brain a little bit to remind who I was and what I was doing this for.
“I went back to the basics and remembered the drills that got me there in the first place. My wife’s a great motivational speaker, she knows how to get someone out of the dirt.”
In his next bout, Rios won a rough fight by disqualification over Diego Chaves. Then in January, Rios dominated Mike Alvarado with a third-round knockout, closing their trilogy of fights with another stoppage.
Rios said he was told by his promoter, Bob Arum, that he’d fight again in the summer, but Arum said he couldn’t strike a deal with another welterweight champion, England’s Kell Brook, that would pay Rios enough. So Rios was on hold until Bradley agreed to terms that’ll pay Rios $1.3 million for Saturday’s bout.
Instead of going frantic during the downtime, Rios said he relished the extra time with his family in their four-bedroom home, while allowing pinched nerves in his right arm to fully heal.
“I live a moderate life, the life of a person who makes $60,000,” Rios said. “I have to be smart with my money. It’s not about the luxurious life.
“We don’t need it, we don’t spend it.”
Bradley, meanwhile, switched to Teddy Atlas as trainer and is vowing to outbox, outsmart and outpoint his opponent. Bradley was so confident last week that he told reporters Rios could only beat him with a lucky punch.
Rios trained for this fight at Garcia’s Riverside ranch, but Rios was slow to get in shape after his layoff. Garcia brought in a conditioning coach for morning sessions, and Vicky Rios scolded her husband to stop his “pity party” and work hard like so many others do.
Rios now is clearly in shape.
“The lucky punch might come after all,” said Rios, who has watched Bradley engage and get punished in recent fights with Ruslan Provodnikov, Pacquiao and Jessie Vargas.
“He’s been hit before, been wobbled a couple times, and after a while the wobbliness catches up to you. He says all I need is a lucky punch, let him think that.
“If he runs and boxes, I’ll cut the ring off, go inside, be effective, be strong. Let him bring what he wants to bring. And if he wants to fight me, everyone knows I love to fight.”
Garcia dismissed boxing critics who believe Rios doesn’t have it anymore, but added that “the fight won’t be easy, but ... Brandon’s ready to do what he does best. It’s the most important fight of Brandon’s career. We need this one.”
Arum said that if Rios wins, he’ll push to get a bout against someone such as light-welterweight world champions Terence Crawford or Viktor Postol, or light-middleweight Saul Alvarez.
“I need to get back to the top and stay there,” Rios said. “I felt what it’s like to be a champion before. I’m not going to let it slip through my fingers again.
“I lost, and I saw what that does to your career — they forget about you. I don’t want that to happen again.”