It was everybody's surefire fight of the year, power against speed, a toe-to-toe showdown of unbeatens on HBO.
By Chris Farina, Top Rank
Brandon Rios, left, and Richard Abril get into a shoving match during a press conference Monday in Los Angeles.
By Chris Farina, Top Rank
Brandon Rios, left, and Richard Abril get into a shoving match during a press conference Monday in Los Angeles.
Brandon "Bam Bam" Rios vs. Yuriorkis "The Cyclone" Gamboa on April 14. The nicknames aptly described this matchup, and any boxing writer worth his salt wanted to be ringside for such a can't-miss title fight.
Gamboa apparently never got the message. When he didn't show up at the promotional kickoff news conferences, Top Rank, the fight's promoter, was confused and understandably furious, and Rios was left to ponder what might have been.
For Gamboa, who was to make $1.1 million, the issue was money.
As in more of it, and, as in Floyd "Money" Mayweather, whose gym Gamboa was spotted at the day of the Miami news conference, which, ironically, Gamboa had requested for his adopted hometown.
Gamboa, a Cuban defector, is still working out at Mayweather's gym. Top Rank says Gamboa is under contract to them and that won't change.
During the Miami event, a little-known Cuban lightweight named Richard Abril, who was there to support Gamboa, saw his opportunity and rushed the stage, slapping Rios and challenging him to a fight.
The dislike between the two was palpable and, with Gamboa's mind unchanged, even in the face of a hundred grand bonus Top Rank offered to the winner, a fight was born.
Rios (29-0-1, 22 KOs) and Abril (17-2-1, 8 KOs) will face off for the interim WBA lightweight title Saturday night at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
The title is the one Rios left on the scales in his 11th-round TKO against England's John Murray last December, when he was stripped of the belt for not making weight.
Abril will find a Rios who seems to have learned from his last debacle and is taking his training more seriously. Among other things, he hired a nutritionist.
"He is helping a lot," Rios said during a recent conference call, referring to nutritionist Cecilio Flores. "He is cooking great and I'm eating great. I feel strong and training hard as usual.
"This is the smartest move I have made in my career. And it's paying off very well right now."
Abril, meanwhile, holds the interim lightweight title after defeating former champion Miguel Acosta last October. Rios defeated Acosta in February 2011 to win the title for the first time.
The Rios-Abril fight is now on HBO pay-per-view (9 p.m. ET, $44.95), but needed an injection of star power to justify the PPV.
So 38-year-old Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez (53-6-1, 39 KOs) will face Ukrainian Serghiy Fedchenko (30-1, 13 KOs) from Mexico City for the interim WBO light welterweight title.
It is Marquez's first fight in his hometown in 18 years, and if he wins, he will become the second Mexican (Erik Morales) to win titles in four weight classes.
Also on the card, lightweight Mike Alvarado (31-0, 23 KOs) battles Mauricio Herrera (18-1, 7 KOs), who has wins over highly regarded Ruslan Provodnikov and Mike Dallas Jr. The Mandalay matchup will be a light welterweight 10-rounder.
Alvarado's bloody 10th-round TKO victory against Breidis Prescott in November was a leading fight of the year candidate for 2011.
Meanwhile, Rios and Abril haven't stopped fighting outside the ring.
At a press conference Monday in Los Angeles, tempers again flared. Rios shoved Abril, slapped Abril's trainer, Osmiri Fernandez, across the face, then let his mouth do the talking.
"No unheard-of fighter like Abril will ever beat me," Rios said. "He's going to go down and he's going to go down real hard. In the boxing world, Abril is in the darkness and I will keep him there. I haven't forgotten what he did to me in Miami. He's going to pay big-time."
By Wednesday's final press conference in Las Vegas, Top Rank kept the pair away from each other, forgoing the traditional staredown pose for fear of reprisals.
But the vitriol kept flowing.
"He is going to run away from me all night," said Rios. "I think he's going to pull a Forrest Gump. 'Run Richard. Run!' "
Abril then took U.S.-born Rios' heritage to task.
"Rios is not as good as everyone says. He's only 50 percent Mexican," said Abril, who is from Cuba but is in the U.S. on a work visa. "I ride horses, listen to Mexican music and speak the language. I'm more Mexican than he is.
"He doesn't even understand me when I yell at him in Spanish."
OK, then.
If Saturday's bout can match the prefight sparring, this could be good.
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