There were no good guys in this fight, including the vampiric right wing Balkan ref, who took it upon himself to ruin a perfectly filthy fight. Since the advent of MMA people are fond—especially in martial arts schools—of referring to boxers as one dimensional fighters who have only a punching solution to combat and would be totally helpless in a no holds barred situation.

First of all boxing is so encumbered with rules that they are all broken regularly. Anytime you put so many rules on the books that it becomes tough to officiate an event you will end up dealing with it by issuing warnings—which means nothing is a foul the first time you do it—otherwise the event becomes as dynamic and slow-moving as courtroom litigation.

As for Rios he is a one dimensional fighter who is large for his class, hits hard, and takes a huge shot. He fouled at an above normal but not ridiculous level.

Draculich is a control freak of a ref who knew that Chavez was going to keep switching up his foul game so basically disqualified him for being a dick, not even citing the foul in question! At one point he stopped the fight and told both men—who had both been penalized a point for minor infractions—that one of them was going to be disqualified!

Diego Chaves is a perky Argentine jock with a perpetual grin with great soccer legs who does not seem to be able to stay out of trouble. This guy probably spent every day in the vice principal’s office in elementary school. Technically he is the Willie Pep of our age. His best move, which could have won him the fight, if he had been able to resist the temptation to ruffle the shroud over Count Draculich’s coffin, was the turning left hook as a cutoff punch and counter.

He held in various ways, measured [for which he was never called], head butted, shoulder butted, head rubbed, foot stepped, elbowed in a nice oblique fashion, laced the eyes blatantly [though, unlike Willie Pep of old he had only duct tape to rub in his opponent’s eyes instead of actual laces], and held and used the curve of the glove to upbraid Brandon’s eyes since our modern gloves have the thumb inconveniently attached to the body of the glove. His master stroke was when he got Brandon in a guillotine and did a rolling neck throw, looking up innocently at the towering Transylvanian ref with a ten-year-old ‘who me?’ look of innocence on his face.

For Brandon’s part he was outclassed and resigned himself to roaring, ‘He thumbed me in the fuckin’ eye’ and ‘motherfucker’. Rios did score some rabbit punches and did hold and head butt.

When the fight was stopped Chavez was leading a split decision. Rios is more or less a grind-it-out foil for more interesting fighters, and Chavez wants to fight him again. I’m almost wondering if the little prick did this on purpose to build interest for a rematch. You know, if we had a world razor fighting league I’d make Chavez my first pick. I find it hard to believe that he has not stabbed someone in an alley.

The next time you hear a karate or MMA man speak of boxers as rule bound robots you might want to view Rios versus Chavez before agreeing.