Jose Gonzalez schools Burns and then quits from injury

By Boxing News - 05/11/2013 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Right now, fans of WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) are giving him lots of pats on the back after he came from near oblivion to defeat Jose Gonzalez (22-1, 17 KO’s) by a 9th round retirement following a wrist injury that Gonzalez suffered at some point in the fight to his left wrist.

Burns was getting totally schooled until after the 7th. What’s unclear is whether the injury was the result of Burns winning the 8th and 9th rounds, which were the only two rounds I gave him in the fight, or whether Gonzalez had simply gassed out in the 7th round after he rocked Burns with a solid right hand to the head that caused Burns to scurry to the ropes in a backwards fashion.

The stoppage was just strange because Gonzalez only had to to hang on and jab Burns with right hands for the remaining three rounds of the fight to seal the victory. Gonzalez was so far ahead at the time that he could have lost the last three rounds and still have won the fight.

Burns took a lot of shots in this fight and was getting totally embarrassed in rounds one through seven. He was too slow and getting eaten up with counters by the stronger and faster Gonzalez each time he came forward trying to throw his power shots.

We also discovered early in the fight that Burns couldn’t reach Gonzalez with his jab because each time he would jab, Gonzalez would lean backwards and effortlessly avoid the shot. That didn’t stop the crowd from cheering Burns, making it seem as if he was landing when he was hitting only air. I wondered about the judges.

Knowing how judges are influenced by crowd, I was hoping they weren’t scoring Burns’ air punches as actual scoring blows and giving Burns rounds he didn’t deserve. In the end it didn’t due to the injury, but you still want to know what the three judges were seeing in scoring the fight because it was a master class by Gonzalez from rounds one through seven and I couldn’t see a round in there to give Burns.

Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn from Matchroom Sport is talking about wanting to put him in a unification bout against IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez. This is the fight that Burns’ previous promoter had been trying to put together before Burns changed promoters. I’m not sure that it’s a fight that boxing fans want to see at this point.

There’s really not much out there for Burns at 135 as far as unification bouts. He had the chance to fight WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner recently, but turned it down. Now the Broner ship has sailed and it won’t be back for Burns, and maybe that’s a good think for Burns and Hearn. Broner would have knocked out Burns tonight, and he would have continued to thrash Burns even if he had broken his left wrist. Broner would not be stopped.



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