So that’s his secret. (via)

The meat on the menu this past weekend for the fearsome middleweight puncher was Nobuhiro Ishida, and while Gennady Golovkin beating him was no more surprising than his choice of favorite meal, it was at least somewhat surprising that Golovkin was able to stop Ishida given how sturdy he’s been in the past. It was some shot, too.

We’ll have more on the card Golovkin headlined in this edition of Weekend Afterthoughts, but mostly we’ll be talking about the Mike Alvarado-Brandon Rios II awesomeness.

(Anthony Crolla, right, shares the spoils with Derry Mathews)

(Mike Alvarado punches Brandon Rios; photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank)

LAS VEGAS -- It is impossible to determine exactly how many years of their lives Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado have snatched from one another over the course of two fights, but just like the first time, it should be crystal clear that both men deserve equal shares of respect from fans and media alike. 

When a fight becomes so good that you simply don't care about scoring or cards or judges anymore, we wish we could just live in those brutal moments for as long as possible, and relish the knowledge that those moments were for us fans. 

We may not have gotten another stoppage, and perhaps not quite the same level of blood and gore, but Mike Alvarado winning a unanimous decision over Brandon Rios was about as fun as we wished it would be. 

(Jose Ramirez crumples Charlie Dubray; photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank)

LAS VEGAS -- In the opening bout of the afternoon, junior welterweight Manuel Lopez improved his record to 2-0 (2 KO) by scoring a technical knockout in two rounds over awkward Las Vegas native Jason Tresvan. Lopez had to find a bit of a groove, as Tresvan's head movement and weird style posed a few issues. By the end of the1st round, however, Lopez found a way in and began hammering Tresvan to the body -- even through a near chest-high foul protecor. Lopez swarmed in round 2 and forced a stoppage when Tresvan fell into a corner, clearly rocked. Tresvan's record falls to 0-2 (0 KO).

Welterweight Roberto Lopez's face had difficulty holding itself together against Juan Heraldez, despite giving a game effort in spots. By the end of 4 rounds, Heraldez left the ring with a 5-0 (4 KO) ledger, and Lopez left with a badly swollen mug. Most of the bout consisted of Lopez stalking ineffectively while getting peppered by sharper, crisper shots from Heraldez, though the latter scored a knockdown in round 2 with a right-left combination. Lopez, now 4-5-2 (1 KO), looked to have a busted sniffer, a cut lower lip and two swelled up eyes. 

A surprisingly entertaining heavyweight fight between Brett Rather and Juan Guajardo saw a lot of punches flying for a scrap between big men, and a close decision in favor of Las Vegas native Rather. Guajardo managed to send Rather down in the 1st round and follow up nicely, but he likely lost the next three rounds, though not for lack of toughness or effort. Guajardo gassed out as a result of trying to close the show, but showed that Rather is fairly easy to hit if you're willing to withstand good body work. Rather is now 3-0 (0 KO), while Guajardo moves to 2-1 (1 KO). Scores were 38-37 across the board.

Junior Featherweight Tramaine Williams, 6-0 (2 KO), pitched a shut out over a relatively stationary target in New Mexico's John Herrera in the fourth bout of the card. While Williams proved to have quick hands and a vaguely Pernell Whitaker-esque style, Herrera did little more than walk forward and showcase Williams' hand speed. At a few points, Williams had no difficulty landing several southpaw left hands to the head in a row, and Herrera did nothing about it. Scorecards read 40-36 thrice for Williams. Herrera falls to 4-6-1 (2 KO).

Up until 1:49 of the 5th round, Michael Finney wasn't showing more than a gear or two in smacking around fellow junior middleweight Osvaldo Rojas, who was content to lay on the ropes and take shots, only occasionally lashing out. In round 4, Finney doubled Rojas over with body shots, but Rojas fought back hard and stayed upright. But two left hands to the body in round 5 were too much, and Rojas fell -- both to the canvas and to 7-3-2 (2 KO). Despite his now 11-0 (9 KO) record, Finney actually got hit with left hooks easily and didn't appear to be doing much adjusting. But when he did, it mattered. 

In a junior welterweight bout, Charlie Dubray lasted 1:06 against 2012 Olympian Jose Ramirez, who clearly walked through the ropes looking for blood. Though the bout was short, the gap in class was very clear, as Dubray generally threw punches with his head down. A left hook to the body followed by a combination upstairs put Dubray down moments into the fight, and another left hook to the body put Dubray down for good and raised Ramirez' record to 2-0 (2 KO). Dubray, from Hastings, Nebraska, goes to 1-1 (1 KO). 

Miguel "El Alacran" Berchelt also made quick work of his foe, overwhelming Carlos Claudio in 1:53 of the 1st round and forcing referee Kenny Bayless to step in. The first 90 seconds were relatively uneventful, with Berchelt closing in while Claudio tried to stay away, but a left hand had Claudio covering up against the ropes. At that point, Berchelt unloaded a good dozen unanswered shots, most of which didn't land, but Claudio could do nothing more than turtle up and wait to be saved. Berchelt left the ring with a 17-0 (14 KO) record, while Claudio's now stands at 15-10-3 (8 KO). 

Oh that entertainingly manic Brandon Rios. He struggled to make weight a little the day before his junior welterweight rematch with Mike Alvarado on HBO Saturday, so he had to lose his underpants, but once he was clothed again he was carrying on like an insane person.

Our bearded correspondent Patrick Connor is in Las Vegas as credentialed media, shooting smooth video when and where he can. Make sure to check out the rest of the weigh-in footage from Friday, and keep visiting The Queensberry Rules YouTube page for whatever else he can concoct for the rest of the weekend.

As mentioned last night, Teddy Atlas gave the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board an enthusiastic (and most welcome -- thanks, Teddy!) endorsement on ESPN's Friday Night Fights. Above is video of how it went.

If you just discovered the Board last night, here's the website, and here are a few supplementary items that explain what it's about or respond to the various things people have said about it or asked about it.

Brian Vera had his hands full with Donatas Bondorovas on ESPN's Friday Night Fights through seven rounds of a solid fight, but the referee made a highly debatable call to stop it at the end of that round. In the corner, asked if he could see through a cut over his left eye and over his nose, a blinking Bondas answered, "not good," and that was enough for the ref to decide Bondas didn't want to continue and wave it off. Afterward, his corner protested immediately, with one member of his team explaining that he didn't understand the question in English and berating him with the humorous-yet-valid, "Do you speak Lithuanian?" It sure didn't seem like the cut over his eye was bleeding dangerously, but his body language was only so-so; the ref probably should've asked more questions than the one he did. Vera opened the cut on the nose in the 1st round, but he probably didn't win the first two -- Bondas was outlanding him and landing the harder shots. Eventually Vera (pictured on the right) began to do damage, but Bondas (pictured on the left) was again coming on before things ended and he had a strong chance of winning on the cards.

Vera was in line for a bigger money bout against the likes of middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., Gennady Golovkin or Matthew Macklin, and it's likely his performance was shaky enough as to make those bouts less marketable. Whether it stops them from happening anyway is a whole 'nother thing.

Before the main event, ESPN's Teddy Atlas gave a glowing endorsement to the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a project I've been working on with a group of writers to crown lineal champions. Asked by studio host Todd Grisham if the Board would be good for the sport, he answered, "It's great. It's not good." Compared to all the alphabet belts, Atlas also said, "There has to be a better system. This is a better idea... We have to have an alternative to what's there right now. I think this is an alternative. I applaud it. That's why I'm promoting it and why I'm giving some light to it." Music to my ears. I hope to have video of the entire segment soon. [Quotes are, it turns out, approximate, and I have deleted a reference to one of them. The video will show the slight differences.]

On the undercard, light heavyweight prospect Jackson Junior looked nothing like a prospect in getting stopped in the 4th after three knockdown courtesy Umberto Savigne, whom he had sparred with only a week before. Jackson won the 1st round, but by the 2nd Savigne had completely figured out his thorough overcommitment to his punches and began countering him mercillessly. He dropped Jackson in that very same round with a right, with Jackson throwing one of his home run punches even as he fell. Another right felled him in the 4th and a jab put him down for the final time, as Jackson only had his legs for the 1st round tops and was flopping around the ring like he was ice-skating on flip-flops.

(photo by Shane Sims, Banner Promotions)

It might make you cut weight, but a tapeworm is not exactly a performance-enhancing drug, so we're already defying the headline. A tapeworm like the homely fellow to the left is what laid 17 eggs in the brain of one of this weekend's combatants, light heavyweight Isaac Chilemba, six years ago. "If they hatched, they would have eaten him alive," it says here.

Yet as you might ascertain from the headline, we have a whole lot of juicing to talk about in this edition of Quick Jabs. If you're the type that's getting sick of it all -- and I'm well on my way -- we'll also have some gunplay, some public cunnilingus, a sibling spat over who gets to be a fighter's trainer and a few other things that have nothing to do with 'roids.

(From left to right: Derry Mathews, promoter Eddie Hearn, Anthony Crolla)

Anthony Crolla makes his first competitive start this weekend since the night he almost killed Heywood rival Kieran Farrell. In a suffocating December brawl, the 22-year-old Farrell developed an acute subdural haematoma that threatened his life. He survived but not without consequence. Farrell lost almost a third of his brain, his career and a pitiless dream. The effect on Crolla has yet to be measured. Rarely, though, are the winners of such catastrophes able to proceed unaltered.

Former featherweight world champion Barry McGuigan confessed to pulling his punches against Jimmy Duncan after previous foe Young Ali (Asymin Mustapha) fell into a coma and later died in 1982. A tormented Chris Eubank was similarly affected against Thulani Malinga after Michael Watson only narrowly evaded death in their titanic rematch. Junior lightweight world titlist Gabriel Ruelas claimed to have been haunted by the ghost of Jimmy Garcia when he re-entered the fray against Azumah Nelson. Ruelas had dealt the 23-year old Colombian Garcia a prolonged beating seven months prior from which he would never recover. The boxers that left the ring under their own volition were subsequently crippled with guilt and regret. It is a familiar story.

In 1994, Liverpool’s Richie Wenton turned his back on Neil Swain in the middle of an exchange, spat out his mouthpiece and wept -- so tortured was he over his involvement in the death of Londoner Bradley Stone. “Every second of every minute of every round, I was thinking about Bradley,” he said afterwards. There have been countless more examples. Mbulelo Botile didn’t win another fight after injuring Paul Ingle. Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini was never the same boxer after the death of Duk Koo Kim. Emile Griffith after Benny Paret. Ezzard Charles after Sam Baroudi. Training to deliver unyielding punishment upon an opponent without ever intending to hurt them became a mystifying paradox too pronounced to ignore.

To compound the psychological quandary that confronts Crolla, the man that opposes him at Liverpool’s Echo Arena is Derry Mathews, who stopped the New Moston man on his feet in Britain’s most torrid encounter of last year. The pair will contest the vacant Commonwealth title at lightweight Saturday. Both are former British champions.

Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado are not like most humans. They’re not even like most boxers, a class of people who, to varying degrees, must suppress their self-preservation instinct. At the lowest end, the “hit and don’t get hit” subset of stylists still know what they’re in for when they enter the boxing ring, because the mere act of stepping between the ropes requires an understanding that pain and punishment are inevitable. The “take two punches to give one” types have to tamp down the self-preservation instinct yet more, but Rios and Alvarado aren’t even like most of them, the brawlers who fight that way because it’s their best chance to win. Rios and Alvarado can. Not. Help. Themselves. They are adherents to the school of violence for violence’s sake. Rios grins like the Joker when he gets punched. Alvarado, apparently, indulges in casual extracurricular knife fights during training camp.

You could imagine well in advance how a fight between these two junior welterweights might play out, and that’s why the match was made last year. It’s why it was the Fight of the Year for 2012 and it’s why we’re getting a rematch Saturday on HBO.

The worst thing you can say about Rios-Alvarado II is that whereas last year it was viewed, nearly universally, as competitive, it is not this time. There a few answers to why we're still getting the rematch, none of them bad: The ending of the first fight was not so conclusive because the referee made a borderline call to step in and save Alvarado, but if not for the TKO loss, Alvarado might’ve had a chance to win a decision; Alvarado didn’t fight as well for the entirety of the fight as he could’ve and should’ve; and even if it’s not competitive, so what? – it will be thrilling for every second both of them are standing. Worst case scenario: It’s not as good as the first, but even this accounting of lackluster sequels features a number of fights that weren’t at all bad ones.