Fresh off of his impressive stoppage victory over the rugged former WBO Junior Welterweight Champion Mike Alvarado, thaboxingvoice.com got a chance to speak with the newly crowned WBO Champion Ruslan Provodnikov and discuss his thoughts on the fight as well as his performance.
It was a long road for Provodnikov to get where he is today and achieve his dream of becoming a world champion, but he always believed that the hard work would eventually pay off one day. “I’m just a kid from a small town in Siberia. I never believed that this was possible, but I did believe in myself, and today I proved that believing in myself made me who I am today,” he explained.
It’s not an easy task to go into a world champion’s home state and into his backyard to win a world title, but Provodnikov was fully prepared for the task at hand. “I think it was a risk coming into his home town. I can admit it. There were negatives for me in this fight, and there were risks for me in this fight, but I knew that to be something, to achieve something, you need to risk it, and I did risk it, and I did what I had to do.”
Mike Alvarado has been known to not shy away from a slugfest as was evidenced in his first fight with Brandon Rios last October, in which he lost by seventh round TKO, but he also showed some good boxing ability in winning a twelve round decision in a rematch this past March. Many people were wondering how Alvarado would approach the fight with Provodnikov. Would he box or would he slug it out with the tough Russian? It really didn’t matter to Provodnikov. He was ready for whatever Alvarado chose to do. “I said before the fight, whether he is going box or he is going to fight me, whatever he is going to try, I knew he was going to try different things, but it’s not going to help him. I proved and I knew what was going to happen in this fight.”
Looking back at Alvarado’s two fights with Brandon Rios and seeing how he was able to make adjustments in the second fight to come out victorious, the question was asked: Would he give Alvarado a rematch? Provodnikov replied, “I don’t think this fight, the way it went and he’s a warrior, and he’s going to achieve a lot, and he’s going to fight a lot of big fighters, but after this fight I just don’t think we need another fight with him. This is past us.”
After this tremendous victory the future looks very bright for Provodnikov. There are a lot of potential big fights for him down the road but as of right now he isn’t ready to call anyone out just yet. “What will happen in 2014? I just need a little rest and then my team will meet, and we’ll decide what we’re going to do.”