Tomorrow night on HBO Boxing After Dark, Brandon Rios returns to the ring to face Diego Chaves in a welterweight main event from Las Vegas, and today at 6:00 pm EDT, the fighters weigh in, including junior welterweight titleholder Jessie Vargas and challenger Anton Novikov.
The weigh-in will be streamed live at TopRank.TV.
Rios (31-2-1, 23 KO) has lost back-to-back fights to Mike Alvarado and Manny Pacquiao, and is looking to bounce back in a potentially very dangerous fight against Chaves (23-1, 19 KO), a powerful welterweight puncher. For Rios, this is kind of a make-or-break fight as a top-level, main event fighter. If he loses here, he's back at square one, more or less.
Vargas (24-0, 9 KO) will be making the first defense of his WBA junior welterweight title against Novikov (26-0, 10 KO) in what is another sneaky good fight that has flown under the radar. This is no easy defense for Vargas, at least on paper. If he's impressive in this fight, it will deserve real credit. Novikov has been dominant as a professional thus far, but this is a step up for him, and perhaps for Vargas, as well.