By Scott Gilfoid: After going down to a bitter defeat in his last fight, former WBO lightweight champ Ricky Burns (36-3-1, 11 KO’s) will have his career on the line tonight when he steps inside the ring with southpaw Dejan Zlaticanin (18-0, 13 KO’s).
A win over Zlaticanin probably won’t tell us much about how much Burns has left in the tank, because his promoter Eddie Hearn found the Montenegro native near the bottom of the WBC’s rankings for Burns to have someone that he would have a good chance of beating.
Hearn didn’t pick from the top of the WBC’s rankings by selecting Jorge Linares or Daniel Estrada. Zlaticanin was picked from the bottom. As such, a win over this guy will basically tell us zero about Burns other than the fact that he can beat a guy that a lot of other contenders can beat. But if Burns goes life and death with Zlaticanin, it’ll reinforce the view that many boxing fans have that the 31-year-old Burns has lost a few steps and can no longer even beat soft opposition with ease.
Sure, Burns can stubbornly stick around the sport for another 9-10 years, but he’d have to adjust to being just a contender and no longer a world champion caliber fighter.
Burns, 31, doesn’t see his career being on the line, because he feels that his career will keep churning forward even if he loses to the 5’6” Zlaticanin, but the reality is that Burns will be pretty much finished if he isn’t already. His last three fights against Terence Crawford, Raymundo Beltran and Jose Gonzales has already painted a picture of something not being right with Burns.
In a sign that even Burns recognizes this, he recently dumped his long term trainer Billy Nelson and replaced him with Tony Sims in effort to fix his sagging career. But in this case, it might be the trainer with the problem. We’ve seen tons of fighters changing trainers left and right late in their careers when they’re looking for a new start. Believe me, it rarely works. Miguel Cotto was one of the rare guys who was able to do something by changing trainers to Freddie Roach recently, and we’re still not sure if Cotto is winning now because of Roach of careful match-making.
The Burns- Zlaticanin will take place at the Braehead Arena, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. It’s likely to be packed with Burns’ fans hoping to see him look good against Zlaticanin. Let’s hope that Burns does a better job fighting in front of his fans tonight compared to the last time he fought in Glasgow last March in his loss to Terence Crawford.
Burns can win tonight and still end up looking like a loser if the fight is controversial one like his 12 round draw he was given last September in his fight against Raymundo Beltran. Burns fought well enough to deserve to win one round, but the judges gave him a draw in a fight that took place in Glasgow. If Burns has another fight like that, it’ll be an awful way of getting a world title shot against WBC champ Omar Figueroa.
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