This Saturday, May 17th, the The Inglewood Forum will host a 12 round welterweight fight between historic champion Juan Manuel Marquez and Mike Alvarado. Right now, the book at Several Bookmakers has Marquez favored at (-240), with the comeback on Alvarado at (+200).Marquez is a certain Hall of Famer, as his 55-7-1 career record has seen him win world championships at Featherweight, Super Featherweight, Lightweight and Light Welterweight and he has a world title at Welterweight on his mind before he retires. He came up short in his last fight against Timothy Bradley, losing a tight split decision.
Marquez finally got the Manny Pacquiao jinx of his back in the fight prior, so losing an SD to Bradley is not a significant sign of slippage for the 40 plus Marquez. The fact is, his conditioning has gone through the ceiling, and when you combine his newfound speed and strength with his already legendary arsenal of skills, and it is going to take a Pacquiao or Bradley level fighter to beat him.
Which brings us to Mike Alvarado, who is 1-2 in his last 3 fights after starting his career off an impressive 33-0. He is 1-1 against Brandon Rios in that 1-2 span, losing by TKO then avenging the loss with a Unanimous Decision that could have gone the other way. In his last outing, which was for the WBO Light Welterweight title against Ruslan Provodnikov, he cut his opponent in the seventh, then got dropped twice in the 8th and then responded ‘No’ twice to the referee’s question ‘Do you want to continue?’. A better look at his 33-0 record earlier reveals reasonable but not stellar competition.
So for Alvarado, this fight is a very tall order. At 33 years old and coming off a pair of wars with Rios, he can no longer be considered a young gun, rising opponent to challenge Marquez. At this point, he is a mid-tier fighter who will be unlikely to solve Marquez’ puzzle, therefore extending Marquez career as he hunts for a title in a fifth weight class and big, big paydays.