Rios a lightweight on the rise

LAS VEGAS – Brandon Rios had never heard of Robert Garcia when they first met in 2004. Rios was a highly regarded amateur a step away from making the U.S. Olympic boxing team. Garcia was a former world champion who was in the early stages of his career training fighters.

Rios began to box when he was 8 in Garden City, Kan., not exactly the kind of place where world-class boxers usually develop. His father, Manuel, worked in the slaughterhouse at Tyson Fresh Meats and hadn't shown the slightest interest in boxing.

"Most of the meat you eat, probably even the hamburgers at McDonald's, that cow probably came from the slaughterhouse where my father works," he said.

Rios caught the eye of highly regarded manager Cameron Dunkin during the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials. Dunkin had his sights on another top featherweight, Carney Bowman, and the two met in a loser's bracket match.

Both Dunkin and Garcia were impressed by what they had seen of Rios, who was as tough and hard-nosed as they come, if not somewhat crude in terms of skills.

Garcia worked Rios' corner in the Olympic box-offs, when he lost a 23-13 decision to Mickey Bey that sent Bey to Athens, Greece, and left Rios as an alternate to the Olympic team.

But their relationship wasn't cemented until a few weeks later in Las Vegas, when Dunkin brought Rios to a professional card at the Plaza Hotel. Dunkin was raving to Rios about Garcia's credentials, but Rios had no clue.

"I was telling him, 'Hey, Robert was 31-0, he's a former world champion, he fought Diego Corrales,' but he didn't know anything," Dunkin said. "He says, 'Who is Diego Corrales?' "

Corrales, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2007, was a two-division world champion and one of the most exciting fighters of his time. In 2004, Corrales was just about at the peak of his career, but Rios had no clue.

Dunkin suggested that Rios and Garcia spar, so they went to a local gym. There, the story diverges, depending upon who tells it. According to a beaming Rios, he left Garcia a bloodied and beaten man.

The way Dunkin and Garcia recall it, Garcia schooled Rios.

"Robert just beat the snot out of him," Dunkin said.

Whatever occurred that day was enough to form a bond between them that lasts until this day. And Rios, who fights for his first world title on Saturday at the Palms when he challenges champion Miguel Acosta for the World Boxing Association lightweight belt, learned slowly, but surely what it means to be a professional.

"Brandon has a lot of talent, a lot of ability, but he's the kind of guy you have to stay on top of all the time," Garcia said.

Rios is 26-0-1 and has looked increasingly good each time out. He quickly developed a reputation as an entertaining television fighter, but it wasn't until September, when he dominated the highly regarded Anthony Peterson, that he began to turn heads.

Even his promoter, Top Rank's Bob Arum, had difficulty figuring him out.

"At first, early on, he had an attitude problem and I think he liked to goof off too much," Arum said. "He'd come prepared to fight once and you'd think he'd turned the corner, and then he would come out unprepared the next time. It seemed like he didn't take it seriously."

He's a fun-loving guy who laughs easily and is always up for a joke or a prank. His love of the hijinks is probably what brought him the most attention of his professional career, though it wasn't the kind of attention he wanted.

In November, a few days before Antonio Margarito, Rios' stablemate, was to fight Manny Pacquiao at Cowboys Stadium, a video surfaced of Rios in which he appeared to be making fun of Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach's Parkinson's disease.

A firestorm erupted. Roach is one of the most beloved figures in the sport, which made the anti-Rios reaction even worse.

Rios apologized quickly, but said the video of him which showed his tilting his head and shaking it as he spoke wasn't an attempt to mock Roach's tremors. Instead, he said, it was part of the mind games that go on between fight camps. Roach had been taking digs at Margarito's camp, Rios said, and he was just trying to return fire. It was, at best, incredibly poor judgment.

"The video? Like I kept telling everybody, it was just a bad video," Rios said. "It came out, but it was mainly to camp. It wasn't to people with that type of illness. Yes, Freddie Roach has the illness and it was a bad video, the way I did it. If people know me because of that, cool, but they probably think I'm an [expletive] because of it.

"At least my name is getting brought up, but it's a learning mistake. I learned from it. It's a mistake I've learned from and it's behind me and I'm moving forward."

Rios, who was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder when he was 15, is an unlikely candidate to make fun of someone with Parkinson's. His 4-year-old brother, Jose, is developmentally delayed and was born three months premature.

Jose's struggles clearly touched him and he said he's sensitive to such issues as a result.

"The thing with Freddie Roach, I wasn't making fun of him, because I know what it is like to have a brother in the family with problems like that," Rios said. Rios said he regrets any shame he brought upon his family because of the infamous video. He will have his father in his corner on Saturday for the first time ever, largely as a way to share the experience with the man who helped him begin in the sport.

Rios nearly was left unable to walk when he was 5, when he hopped inside the bed of a pickup truck his aunt was driving. He tried to jump out when she began to pull away, but his foot got caught, he fell and she wound up driving over his right leg.

When witnesses screamed at her, she backed up and drove over it again. He pulled up his pant leg to reveal a huge scar that circles his knee.

"Never cried, though," he says, proudly.

Three years after that incident, he told his father he would become a world champion. He begged his father to take him to a local gym and thus began an odyssey that will continue when he fights the hard-hitting Acosta on Saturday.

Arum said Rios "will have his hands full, no question about it," but Rios is undeterred. He respects Acosta, but he's been through too much to come up short now.

"I told my dad, I told everyone, 'You know, I'm going to be a world champion,' " Rios said. "I just knew this is what was meant for me. And now, I just have to go out there and listen to Robert and do my job and I'll fulfill that destiny. In a way, I can't believe this day is finally just about here, but on the other hand, I do. For almost as long as I can remember, this is what I wanted to do, to win a world title. And now that I have my opportunity, no way I'm going to [mess] it up."