There's so much to say about Saturday night's Rios-Alvarado fight, but we've said a lot already, and it almost feels cheap to reduce it to words, too. Up above is a fan-made custom highlight package, which is great, and I also wanted to take the chance to link you over to Carlos Acevedo's great post-fight piece at The Cruelest Sport.
Here's a snip of that:
There was a time when the only way to make good living as a prizefighter was to stir the passions of the crowd. If you failed to do that often enough, promoters (who, for the most part, did not have long-term contracts with fighters prior to the late 1970s) would avoid your phone calls or dash across the street if they saw you sauntering down the block. Fighters were legitimate independent contractors back then, freelancers, whose pay was based on tangible results: delirious crowds, worn out turnstiles, ticket stubs stamped "SRO."
Neither Rios nor Alvarado has any problem causing mass hysteria. And on Saturday night they proved it to a feverish audience of over 7,000. They whipsawed punches in close, lashed out with uppercuts, scored with crosses, hooks, and haymakers, and bared the dark allure behind all legitimate blood sports: the revelation of character and style in the face of adversity.