Rios-Alvarado II: A deposit in Cash-out City

Saturday, California’s Brandon “Bam Bam” Rios will make a rematch with Colorado’s “Mile High” Mike Alvarado of the second-best fight of 2012, a relentless engagement Rios won in round 7 when California referee Pat Russell ruled Alvarado was too defenseless to continue at Carson, Calif.’s Home Depot Center in October. Rios-Alvarado II will happen at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

There is a feel of the cash-out to this rematch. It is too soon for Mike Alvarado to review his October mistakes, imagine theoretical corrections, apply theory to his gym routines, bend and memorize his muscles to new positions, then practice these new positions till they bore him. There is not time enough for an athlete who was not stopped brutally in his last fight to do this or time enough for an athlete of sound mind and body to do it, and so imagine for a moment how inadequately timed is Alvarado – who was solved conclusively by Rios in the middle part of their sixth round together barely five months ago and was then wounded in February in what Alvarado’s manager told Rick Reeno was a minor affair, calling what HBO’s camera made look like the shimmering claw-work of a mountain lion on Alvarado’s right cheek, chin and neck, “just a few scratches.”

Such abrasions are not likely to impede Alvarado, Saturday – however perilously close to vital parts of his neck Alvarado’s wounds happened, a fighter with a properly tucked chin shouldn’t have those wounds reopened by another man’s leathered fists – but it is unlikely Alvarado has been able to focus on much more than how those marks sting when perspiration glides its salt-depositing way across them.

Colorado boxing is a realm unto itself; there have not been many world champions from the Centennial State, but one of boxing’s most colorful and well-liked characters, matchmaker Don Smith, resides up that way and one afternoon recounted stories aplenty – liberally punctuating them with his delightfully autobiographical clause, “it is alleged” – of what happened in a place where regulations were wanting: bareknuckle scraps, toughman competitions, tag-team boxing. Out of remnants from that brannigan emerged a prodigious wrestler-cum-boxer named Mike Alvarado, nine years ago.

Alvarado is considered a toughman of his own now, a complement to Brandon Rios’ prehistoric fighting style, but he was not that when he began, and he was not that when promoter Top Rank had him featured on Telefutura years ago. Today, large holes in his résumé, face and neck betray Alvarado’s penchant for unsanctioned combat, which is why the cash-out comes, though without much of the nefariousness the term often connotes. Alvarado knows where his career is at this moment, and exactly how unlikely a Las Vegas main event, broadcast by HBO, was, 20 months ago when he won an IBF Latino title on a Denver softball field adjacent to a functioning railway.

Local shows like that one offer narrow vistas and few escape routes. Smalltown cards in the West are caldrons of reinvention and assumed identities, places where full rosters of flunkies nobody has ever heard of stomp their ways to VIP seats from harried local promoters whose favorite phrase is “Never heard of him!” Commission officials, overdressed and ubiquitous till a call for judgment or actionable information goes out, preen in the provincial authority common to small provinces. The packs that prey near ringside look nothing like what one sees in Las Vegas; however much his attendance at Marquez-Pacquiao IV may have enchanted Mitt Romney, if he gained fifty pounds of fat, three pounds of ink, a pound of beard, and a Harley-Davidson jacket, he still would not make it far enough to be wanded by an offduty cop at such a card’s improvised entrance, much less to his unfolded aluminum chair, beige or grey, with its same seat number handprinted on at least three other VIP tickets.

One does not come out an environment like this and ask for a tuneup or postponement, which is why Alvarado did not ask for either, and neither probably would have been granted him by a sage promoter with no way of knowing how free or healthy Alvarado might be in June. Saturday’s fight is unlikely to be good as its predecessor, which saw Rios undertake a brutal 17-minute apprenticeship from which he emerged with coordinates for a hellish spot heavyweight Ray Mercer once coined “Righthand City” – right before depositing Tommy “The Duke” Morrison there for an unforgettable 1991 exile.

Rios knows Alvarado has no workable solution for his right hand, and Rios knows Alvarado knows it as well, and that should bring the suspenseful round or three that opens their rematch Saturday, when Rios tries to cut Alvarado’s consciousness in two minutes and finds Alvarado, for whatever haplessness he showed in rounds 6 and 7 of their first fight, remains dangerous as any man Rios has fought, until he is softened by a hundred or more punches. One hopes Alvarado spent training camp fixated on other men’s right shoulders and thoughts of Rios’ right deltoid as it twitches the instant before he launches a right cross, or, better still, that Alvarado abandoned his low-lead-hand approach totally – though that seems too rich an account for Hope to settle.

It would be a wonderful thing for Alvarado and prizefighting if Rios were careless enough to hurl himself square on an Alvarado counter, early, wonderful for the spectacle that would ensue and the possibility these savages would make a rubber match, but probability does not favor it. So I’ll take Rios, KO-6, while wishing both men only the very best.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com