Ricky Burns wants to fight Juan Manuel Marquez for the WBO lightweight title

By William Mackay: Not satisfied with being only the WBO lightweight interim champion, Ricky Burns (33-2, 9 KO’s) is now targeting the full champion Juan Manuel Marquez for his next fight, which Burns would like to take place in his native Scotland. It’s more of a pipe dream than reality, though, because Marquez will never waste time fighting a little known guy like Burns, especially in Burns’ home country.

There’s no real money in Marquez facing Burns. It would be an incredibly easy fight for Marquez, as Burns just struggled to beat Michael Katsidis recently. Marquez easily beat Katsidis by a 9th round TKO a year ago in November. Marquez doesn’t need another easy fight against a guy that few people have ever heard of in the United States. Marquez will instead either face Manny Pacquiao again or retire.

Burns will then get to fight for the vacant World Boxing Organization title against hopefully someone good. We don’t want to see Burns facing some lowly opponent and then him becoming a paper champion. We didn’t see much from Burns after he defeated Roman Martinez to capture the WBO super featherweight title in September 2010. Instead of facing someone really good, Burns faced three consecutive soft opponents and then vacated his title when he was about to finally face someone good in Adrien Broner.

Burns would have likely been thrashed by Broner, and he did the right thing by vacating the title. Burns says he moved up due to weight problems but a lot of boxing fans think he got cold feet at the thought of facing the incredibly dangerous Broner, who is not only much faster than Burns but a harder puncher as well.

Burns said to the BBC Sport “If Marquez vacates, obviously I get made champion. But I would prefer it if he moved back down. I’d like to win it that way…I’ll fight anybody put in front of me. I know Kevin Mitchell would like a crack at me. And there would be the winner of Brandon Rios versus John Murray.”

Rios would also destroy Burns without any problems. Let’s face it, Burns will likely get the WBO title after Marquez vacates the belt. However, Burns will have to be content in facing little known opposition like he did when he held the WBO title at super featherweight, because if he faces anyone good like Rios or Broner, he’ll get destroyed. And like I said, Marquez won’t waste his time fighting the little known Burns. It’s not worth beating him up because fans won’t care.

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