Round Up: Rios Wins By TKO in Round 11

December 03, 2011 – Madison Square Garden, New York

12 Rds., WBA Super Welterweight Championship

Champ MIGUEL COTTO, 36-2, 29 KOs, Caguas, Puerto Rico

Vs

ANTONIO ‘TIJUANA TORNADO’ MARGARITO, 38-7-1, 27 KOs, Mexico

Undercard

Fight: Champion BRANDON RIOS, 28-0-1, 21 KOs, Oxnard, Ca. vs JOHN MURRAY, 31-1, 18 KOs, Manchester, United Kingdom

Division:  12 Rds., WBA Lightweight Championship

Result: Rios Wins by TKO in Round 11

Detail: Rios seems incapable of being in a boring fight. While his come-forward, almost careless style opens him up to beatings that would fell lesser fighters, it makes for crowd-pleasing, all-action brawls. You get your money’s worth and then some, and in his tit-for-tat brawl with Murray, it was all “then some.” They rarely stood more than a few feet away from one another, engaging in a high-volume slugfest that left Murray’s face a swollen, bloody mask by fight’s end. That said, it was close all the way up and until the stoppage – indeed, Murray often got the better of Rios, who responded to getting cracked flush in the face by continuing to pressure and through what is quickly becoming Rios’s trademark: the smile of a man who loves to fight. Like Rios’s previous opponents, Murray must’ve been thinking: What do I have to do to break you? The answer: you can do nothing but break yourself. It happened to the tough Murray at 2:06 of Round 11, when Rios repeatedly hammered the defenseless Brit in the face.

Note: Rios, who was stripped of his title for failing to make weight, is moving up to 140 pounds.