Mike Alvarado in One War Too Many?

Mike Alvarado showed he has the boxing acumen to ignore his brawler’s instinct and effectively outbox his more aggressive opponent. But that was against base-level brawler Brandon Rios. Juan Manuel Marquez is a master technician with more than 20 years’ experience—Tim Harrison

In 2011, Mike “Mile High” Alvarado, his face a bloody mess, rallied from a big deficit to take out Breidis Prescott with a flurry of crunching uppercuts in the tenth and last round in a fight that was more blood sport than sport. The dramatic ending left Prescott too spent to stand up and he fell to the mat after returning to his corner.

Mike followed this up with another grueling bout—this time with talented Mauricio “El Maestro” Herrera (18-1) and he garnered a hard-fought, hard-earned win. It was a nonstop epic battle between two warriors and a possible contender for fight of the year.

In October 2012, in what was hailed by many as still another Fight of the Year candidate, undefeated Brandon Rios stopped Mike Alvarado in a jaw-dropping war. Alvarado (33-0) lost for the first time in what was a savage and draining affair, but five months later he made the necessary adjustments and beat Rios to snag the interim WBO light welterweight title.

However, the punishment he absorbed was clearly taking a toll. Thus, when he met Siberian brawler Ruslan Provodnikov (22-2) in October 2013, the Russian was coming off a—you guessed it– Fight-of-the-Year effort against Timothy Bradley and gave Desert Storm all he could handle.

Against Alvarado, Provodnikov came out of the gate fast and never slowed down as he overwhelmed Alvarado decking him twice in the eighth round. Finally, after taking more punishment, Tony Weeks went to Mike’s corner and took a hard look. ‘I asked Mike two to three times, ‘Do you want to continue?’” said Weeks. “And Mike said each time, ‘No.’” Weeks promptly stopped the Mile High mugging for a TKO on the chair before the start of the eleventh round. The fact is, Alvarado has been in too many damaging bouts.

Now, having gone up in weight and presumably more comfortable, Mike will take on the best counter puncher in boxing in Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1).  Though he will have a reach and height advantage over Marquez, Mike must avoid getting into all-out exchanges. But more to the point, how much does Mile High have left after five wars in a row? Indeed, how much did Michael Katsidis have left when he was counterpunched into a head-snapping stoppage loss in 2010 against JMM? The thinking here is that this Mike won’t have enough to keep the master technician off him.