Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank Promotions

Welterweight Brandon Rios has a brotherly kinship with Mike Alvarado that is born of their mutually brutal fighting styles.

But that won’t prevent Rios from trying to knock Alvarado senseless when they meet for the third time on Saturday at The 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, in a bout that is being televised on HBO.

“We’re two real fighters, but we’re cool outside of the ring and everything,” said Rios during a Wednesday conference call. “We’re cool until we get into that ring. That’s when we hate each other and we want to kill each other.”

A former lightweight titleholder, Rios (32-2-1, 23 knockouts) is 2-2 in his past four fights. He was last in the ring for a ninth-round disqualification victory over Diego Chaves in August, which followed his welterweight debut in a unanimous-decision loss to Manny Pacquiao in November 2013.

Prior to Pacquiao, Rios had split junior welterweight bouts with Alvarado (34-3, 23 KOs), stopping him in the seventh round in October 2012 but losing their rematch by close unanimous decision in March 2013.

“There’s no animosity between me and Mike Alvarado,” said Rios. “We’re the same people. We’re the same kind of person. We know what it takes to be where we’re at.”

The 34-year-old Alvarado is 3-3 in his past six fights, starting with a bloody, 10th-round knockout of Breidis Prescott in November 2011 that was followed by a unanimous decision over Mauricio Herrera in April 2012.

After his second fight with Rios, Alvarado was dropped twice in the eighth of a 10th-round stoppage loss to Ruslan Provodnikov in October 2013 before swapping knockdowns with Juan Manuel Marquez en route to a unanimous-decision loss in his last fight in May.

Rios anticipates a similar toe-to-toe clash with Alvarado on Saturday.

“That’s what makes this sport and makes these fights more exciting. Everybody knows that these guys are cool together. They like to kick it. They have fun together,” said Rios. “But once they get into the ring, they freaking kill each other. That’s just what it is. It’s like when you go into the army. All of you are warriors, all of your soldiers, they’re your brothers. Alvarado, he’s like my brother and we fight. We fight until somebody gets hurt.”

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