By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Sims, the trainer for the struggling former two division world champion Ricky Burns (36-3-1, 11 KO’s) is plenty worried about the 31-year-old’s fight this Friday night against little known #13 WBC fringe contender named Dejan Zlaticanin (18-0, 13 KO’s) at the Braehead Arena, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Sims sees the 30-year-old Zlaticanin as a potentially tough foe for Burns, even though he’s never faced any quality opposition during his 6-year-old pro career. In terms of experience, this fight is heavily in Burns’ favor because the southpaw Zlaticanin has faced largely weak opposition during his career, and he’s giving up several inches in height and reach to Burns.
The guys that have given Burns problems lately have been close to the same height as him, but the 5’7” Zlaticanin is a lot smaller.
“Nobody over here has heard of him but this guy is a decent operator,” Sims said to the Dailyrecord.co.uk. “He’s stopped a lot of opponents and the WBC rate him highly. This will be a hard fight. So I don’t want Ricky to go in there and try to knock him out. I want Ricky to out-box him and I’m looking forward to seeing him show his skills.”
The question here is why is Burns fighting a fringe contender like Zlaticanin instead of a higher ranked fighter like #2 WBC Jorge Linares? Burns is talking about his promoter Eddie Hearn potentially getting him a title shot against WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa if Burns wins this fight on Friday. Why didn’t Hearn match him up against a better fighter than Zlaticanin?
Well, just because the World Boxing Council has Zlaticanin ranked near the bottom of their lightweight rankings, it doesn’t translate to Zlaticanin being a great fighter. Heck, even the guys that they have ranked at the top of their rankings are very, very beatable guys. It’s hard to say what goes into the rankings of a fighter with some of these sanctioning bodies, but I frequently don’t much in the way of talent for many of these guys.
With that said, Sims does have every reason to be concerned about Burns playing it safe against Zlaticanin on Friday night, because Burns appears to have lost something in his game since last year. He’s coming off of a loss to Terence Crawford last March, and before that, he was given a gift draw against Raymundo Beltran last year in September.
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