BROOMFIELD ? Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios always walked in lockstep ? their styles are so tuned to clash with each other, their careers so entwined, a third fight between them seemed certain.
Five years ago, within two months, Denver’s Alvarado and California’s Rios twice fought and won on the same cards at the National Western Complex Arena. And in the long route from the stock yards to world titles, Alvarado and Rios gave each other their first career defeats.
So a score was left to settle Saturday at the FirstBank Center in Broomfield in the capper to a classic boxing trilogy, one that echoes the bloodied series between Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti, and Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales.
The result came quick. Rios battered Mike Alvarado from the jump, rocking him with a right uppercut in the third round that sent him to Alvarado to one knee. Alvarado teetered from there.
Before the fourth round, the ringside physician held up two fingers in front of Alvarado’s face and asked him how man.
“Four,” Alvarado said.
Fight over. Rios won by technical knockout in a brutal end to the trilogy. It will likely stand as a disappointing end to Alvarado’s career.
Rios (33-2-1) was sharp throughout. He cut Alvarado (34-4) in the first round and marked up his face with hooks. And 5,988 fight fans started to mix “Ri-os” chants in with Alvarado “3-Oh-3” chants.
“It was my best fight ever,” Rios said. “My plan was to box from the outside and hit him with body shots.
Alvarado, in front of his home crowd, was booed through a post-fight interview on HBO.
“He had nothing, zero,” said Bob Arum, who promoted the fight for Top Rank. “Alvarado looked like he had very little.”
In their first two bouts, Alvarado and Rios battered each other bloody. In Carson, Calif., the two lobbed power shots and jabs with so much frequency, they had little time to move their feet. And Rios finally caught Alvarado with a body shot that tipped him toward a standing TKO.
Alvarado evened the score five months later. He withstood an early Rios barrage, then used a kitchen sink approach of switching stances and long jabs to win a unanimous decision and the World Boxing Organization world title.
Those first two bouts saw an incredible number of punches ? an average of 158.1 per round, more than twice the welterweight average, according to CompuBox. And 65 percent of the punches were power shots.
But all those bloody brawls have taken a toll on Alvarado and Rios.
Alvarado is 34, with a 2-4 mark in six consecutive brutal bouts ? including wins over Rios and Mauricio Herrera and losses to Rios, Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez. And with legal trouble looming after an arrest earlier this month for weapon possession in Denver, his next career move is on hold.
Rios, 28, remains a big draw in boxing. But with a 3-2 record since his first meeting against Alvarado, Rios hinted before the fight that he may consider retiring.
For their trouble Saturday, Rios took home a $850,000 fight purse. Alvarado made $785,000.
In the co-main event, 23-year-old light heavyweight Gilberto Ramirez (31-0) of Mazatlan, Mexico, earned a unanimous decision victory over Maxim Vlasov (30-2) by three scores of 97-93.
Nick Groke: [email protected] or twitter.com/nickgroke
