By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Frank Warren says that IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez (33-3, 13 KO’s) came down with a stomach virus, and that’s his fight with WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (35-2, 10 KO’s will be moved up March 16th to April 20th at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.
The entire card is being moved as well, so we’ll still be seeing Nathan Cleverly vs. Robin Krasniqi in the main event. The one noticeable chance is that Commonwealth super middleweight champion George Groves won’t be participating because he’s left Frank Warren Promotions and signed with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport.
Warren said in his press release this morning “We have his [Vazquez] doctor’s certificate confirming this…I have had to postpone the fight, not canceled…we have worked hard to ensure that Ricky’s unification fight goes ahead.”
They really want Burns to pick up the extra IBF strap. If they’re just doing it for the heck of it, then I see it as a terrible waste of time because Burns won’t gain much from a victory, if he can get it, over Vazquez because he’s not a popular fighter with casual or hardcore boxing fans.
I can understand the need to pick up the IBF strap in order to get a much better deal financially against WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner, but the problem is the Broner ship may have already sailed because he’s not going to sit around and twiddle his thumbs until the end of the year, which is pretty much the earliest a Broner vs. Burns unification bout can take place.
Broner fights on June 15th, and Golden Boy was hoping that Burns would be available for that date, but that’s obviously not going to happen if Burns is facing Vazquez on April 20th. The only way Burns will be available to fight on June 15th, is if he knocks Vazquez out early in their April 20th fight, but given the fact that Burns has pretty much zero power, it’s not likely he’ll be able to dent Vazquez’s chin.
I think Vazquez’s illness was a bad omen for Burns, and he should see it as one. I believe that by not using Vazquez’s sickness as an excuse to scurry away to safety, Burns is now on course to take an embarrassing beating on April 20th by him, and look so bad that he’ll have wished that he didn’t take the fight.
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