games

banggood 18% OFF Magic Cabin Hat Country LLC HearthSong 15% Off Your First Purchase! Code: WELCOME15 Stacy Adams

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Bam Bam's Weight Blunder Won't Make a Difference; Fan's Take - Yahoo! Sports

yahoo - Google News
Google News
Bam Bam's Weight Blunder Won't Make a Difference; Fan's Take - Yahoo! Sports
Apr 14th 2012, 07:18

By now, everyone who cares to know probably knows that Brando Rios (29-0-1, 22 KOs) failed to make weight for Saturday's scheduled bout with Richard Abril for the vacant WBA lightweight title.

The exciting battler from Oxnard, California weighed in at 137 lbs., two pounds over the 135 lb. lightweight limit and then, after being given two hours to shed the weight, actually came back two pounds heavier.

The punishment for Rios' failure to make weight was a 10% fine of his $450,000 purse, with half of that fine ($22,500) going to Abril and the other half staying with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The second half of the pugilistic slap on the hand was that Rios would no longer be able to win the vacant world title. Abril could still take home the strap, but should Rios win, the title would remain vacant.

When all is said and done, though, none of this will really matter.

Barring some crazy, unforeseen circumstances, Rios should walk right through Abril whether he's fighting at 135, 137, 139 or with one leg in a bucket.

Abril (17-2-1, 8 KOs) is a decent enough fighter and a solid second tier guy, but he's nowhere near the elite of his division. The Cuban's career high-water mark came in his last fight, when he took a unanimous decision from former world champ, Venezuela's Miguel Acosta.

It was surely an impressive win, but it came eight months after Rios had already emasculated and ripped Acosta to shreds in a brutal tenth round stoppage.

Before the Acosta fight, Abril's career was purely pedestrian, with losses to Hank Lundy and Breidis Prescott tossed in amid a handful of marginal wins over marginal opposition. There's nothing on his resume that suggests him being ready for the kind of heat that Rios can bring.

As for "Bam Bam," he's been through the weight issue before, notably in his last fight against the UK's John Murray last December.

In that bout, Rios was stripped of his WBA lightweight title for failing to make weight, but went ahead to stop the tough Brit in eleven bloody and mostly one-sided rounds. Despite the ease with which he eventually dismissed Murray, Rios looked gaunt and weak early on in the fight and could've been in serious trouble against a better overall opponent with less of a tendency to cut.

It's debatable whether Abril is better than Murray, but it doesn't really matter. Rios learned his lesson from the Murray fight. It's better to take the penalty and walk into the fight fresh than to actually work to make weight, drain yourself, and enter the ring a diminished fighter.

Looking at it pragmatically, Richard Abril is really walking into a win-win situation Saturday night.

Aside from the extra $22,500 and the chance to win a world title, a loss takes on a lesser significance than before. Abril can attribute the loss to fighting a bigger man and, once Rios leaves for the obviously more reasonable and comforting junior welterweight division, he'll be in a good spot to fight for the still-vacant title.

However, from a practical point of view, that win-win situation may be offset by the brutal beating he's likely to take against Rios.

Other Articles by This Writer:

Masters of war: Boxing's 10 best offensive fighters

5 Fights to Make at Lightweight

Boxing's 10 strangest moments

Paul Magno was a licensed official in the state of Michoacan, Mexico and a close follower of the sport for more than thirty years. He is also a contributor to Fox Sports. In the past, Paul has done work for Inside Fights, The Queensberry Rules and Eastside Boxing.

Sources:

Kevin Iole, Brandon Rios misses weight; blows shot at WBA title, Yahoo! Sports

Boxrec, Boxing Records and Schedules

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

No comments:

Post a Comment