burns754 By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) says he’s ready to start light training after having his jaw broken last month in his controversial 12 round draw against Raymundo Beltran on September 7th in Glasgow, Scotland.

Burns took a beating in that fight, and held constantly from the 4th round on without the referee taking points off for the grabbing. The judges scored it 115-112, 114-114, and 113-115.

The ridiculous scoring was a warmup for the oddball score by judge C.J. Ross a week later in scoring the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight a 114-114 draw. The scores for the Burns-Beltran fight were far worse because Beltran really whipped Burns and ended up having nothing to show for it.

At least with the Mayweather-Canelo fight there was two judges that saw the fight clearly enough to give Mayweather the victory.

Burns said on his twitter:

Was at hospital last week n jaws getting there, can resume light training but still no boxing for a few weeks. Going nuts here! Haha

— Ricky Burns (@ricksterko) October 3, 2013

Initially, Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn had been talking about his career possibly being in the jeopardy of being over due to his broken Jaw at the time. It looks like Hearn was just being a nervous Nelly with his dire outlook.

Burns will be okay, but that doesn’t mean his situation as the WBO champion will be. He’s kind of in a situation where he’s pretty much near the end of the line as the champion because he’s looked terrible in his last two fights against Jose Gonzalez and Beltran.

Burns has unbeaten #1 WBO, Terence Crawford as his mandatory challenger, and he won’t be able to avoid that fight forever. Some of Burns’ fans think that he choose to bypass Crawford to fight other guys, and I agree that Burns will probably do this for the next two fights. But he’s going to have to make a decision by at least 2015 whether to fight Crawford or not if the WBO doesn’t force his hand a lot sooner.

There’s talk that Burns will vacate the WBO title and move up to 140 rather than face Crawford. That’s a move that would utterly predictable for Burns because he pulled a similar move when he was the WBO super featherweight champion in 2011 and he was staring in the face a fight against then No.1 WBO Adrien Broner.

Burns instead gave up the WBO super flyweight title and moved up to the lightweight division and was given the WBO lightweight title outside of the ring by the WBO shortly after having beaten Michael Katsidis by a 12 round unanimous decision to pick up the interim WBO lightweight belt. By the way, I had Katsidis beating Burns in that fight because Burns fought exactly how he did in the Beltran fight by covering up on the ropes, taking punishment and holding all night long. How he wasn’t penalized for the constant clinching is an unknown to me because he was all over Katsidis in that fight with the holding.

If Burns does choose to fight Crawford then he’s going to take a one-sided beating and lose his WBO title. They can have it take place in Glasgow again, and I don’t think it’ll mater because Burns won’t be around for the fight to get to the judges. Crawford will make sure he takes the judges out of the equation by knocking Burns out.