Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios played and preened together like the best of pals on a stage Friday at an official weigh-in. Before fighting each other for a third time, the two boxers sneaked in some fun before a brawl.
Alvarado and Rios will meet in a ring again Saturday for what likely will be the final fight in a heavy-hitting series between two of the most active brawlers in their divisions.
On Friday, they weighed in without drama — Alvarado at 146.5 pounds, Rios at 146.75 near the Pepsi Center — and without the traditional mean-mugging stare-down. Instead, they joked and laughed in a final pre-fight meeting.
“This one’s going to be better,” Rios said, “because we both know each other so well.”
Denver’s Alvarado (34-3, 23 knockouts) and Rios (32-2-1, 23 KOs), of Oxnard, Calif., will cap a trilogy Saturday as the welterweight main event in a welterweight bout at the FirstBank Center in Broomfield, airing on HBO.
And, based on their first two fights, Alvarado and Rios won’t play shy.
In total, the two boxers threw an average of 158.1 punches per round in their previous meetings, according to CompuBox stats — nearly double the welterweight average.
And both Alvarado and Rios love looking for a knockout. More than 65 percent of the punches in their first two fights were power shots.
“We have nothing against each other, but once we get in the ring we know what we have to do,” Alvarado said. “We know what type of fight we’re getting into with each other. That is the warrior that is going to come out of us — we both have heart and power.”
The two were undefeated in 2012 when they met for the first time in Carson, Calif. They traded big blows in a phone booth bout until referee Pat Russell stopped Alvarado on his feet and Rios won by TKO.
Five months later, Alvarado got back at Rios. He jabbed and boxed his way to a unanimous victory to win the World Boxing Organization’s junior welterweight title.
“We have a good gameplan based on that second fight,” Alvarado said. “I’m just keeping my tools sharp so I can make those same kind of adjustments. I already have a blueprint in my head. I just need to be a little stronger. I need to be at my peak.”
Alvarado is 1-3 in his past four fights, including an upset loss by retirement to Ruslan Provodnikov in Broomfield in 2013 and a unanimous decision defeat to Juan Manuel Marquez at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., last May.
Rios, too, has struggled in bouts that didn’t involve Alvarado. He’s 1-2 since 2013, including a lopsided defeat to Manny Pacquiao — “it was like fighting an octopus” Rios said — and an ugly win by disqualification over Diego Chaves in August.
Alvarado and Rios, instead, seem made to fight each other. Their rivalry recalls the famed, bruising trilogy between Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti between 2002-03. Ward won the first, then Gatti took the next two by decision in a hyper-competitive back-and-forth series.
“I don’t look at is as a rivalry,” Alvarado said. “We are going to get in there and do what we do. It’s what we choose to compete in — and it’s 1-1. There has to be a winner to this. We have to figure out who wins.”
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or
