Over a single 24-hour stretch, a person could get several impressions of Brandon Rios.
Catch him in a moment with his kids and he’s similar to any dad—doting on his girls, clowning with his boys and dutifully heading off to work to support the flock.
Hang with him while he’s around his friends and he’s similar to any guy—cracking jokes, making fun and appearing completely at ease with both himself and his surroundings.
But once he wraps his hands and laces up boxing gloves, the demeanor quickly changes.
Though he’s still more likely to smile than most guys whose occupation involves being repeatedly punched in the face, it’s clear the Kansas-born California resident has a capacity for ferocity that rises beyond your garden-variety accountant, plumber or insurance salesman.
Not only does he handle himself exceedingly well in competitive situations where violence is the mandate, he seems to revel in those roles just as much as when he’s the dad or best buddy.
“(It’s easy) when you’re enjoying what you’re doing and you fu*king love boxing. I have passion for it,” he said to HBO’s Max Kellerman in the network’s Face Off: Pacquiao-Rios episode. “It’s not a job for me. It’s not a payday for me. I'm enjoying it. To me, boxing is better than sex. That’s my orgasm. I fu*king love this sport so much.”
Hearing his off-color mantra prompts some to roll their eyes dismissively at his rough nature.
Manny Pacquiao, in fact, while sitting across from him at a small table, tittered like a schoolboy being told his first dirty joke.
But when asked how it was possible to enjoy the sorts of punishment labeled by boxing’s non-devotees as brutal and barbaric—and even laugh while receiving it—Rios doubled-down on the bloodthirsty persona.
“(I’m saying) you hit like a bitch. That’s what I'm doing,” he said. “If you hit me and you can’t hurt me, you better bring a bat or something, because I’m gonna come.”
The approach has yielded 31 wins alongside a single loss and a draw in a pro career that stretches back to 2004, after the now-27-year-old was derailed in a bid to represent the United States in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
He’s ended 23 of those 31 wins inside the scheduled distance and was at his savage best in his most recent victory, a frenetically fierce seventh-round stoppage of then-unbeaten Mike Alvarado that garnered Sports Illustrated’s nod as 2012’s best fight.
It was that brand of perpetual to-and-fro—and the obvious contact high Rios got from it—that yielded a number of variations on the interrogative theme, “What Does Brandon Rios Fight Like?” at insidehboboxing.com.
Among them: “When he punches, his shoulder rolls forward a little more than the average man's, because he cares a little more about knocking you out than the average man” and “Brandon Rios is an example of what would happen if all you cared about in life was punching people in the head and goddamn the consequences, whatever they may be.”
Alvarado won a slightly less intense rematch with Rios by unanimous decision five months later—a disappointment which nonetheless steered the second bout’s loser toward the biggest star turn of his career—Saturday night’s pay-per-view meeting with Pacquiao in Macau, China.
Not surprisingly, Rios has positioned his status as a sizable underdog as a significant chip on his shoulder, a point he had no problem making to his imminent opponent in the Face Off show’s most compelling, provocative sequence.
Dismissing the Filipino’s implication that he wanted “to be like” him with a spot atop the sport’s highest ladder, Rios looked genuinely irritated at the thought and followed up with a pointed declaration of what he intends to do when the two get together in his workplace.
“I don’t wanna be like you. I wanna be like Brandon,” he said. “I feel disrespected. They say I'm his comeback. I’m his punching bag and he's gonna fight Mayweather. But I don’t care about that. I’m ready. I’m gonna come in 100 percent. I’m gonna retire Manny Pacquaio because I’m the next star.”
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