By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t saying that his fighter former two division world champion Ricky Burns (36-3-1, 11 KO’s) isn’t ready for the scrap heap as he heads into fight this Friday night against the hand-picked #13 WBC Dejan Zlaticanin (18-0, 13 KO’s), but at the same time if he loses to this little known guy, his career would be pretty much over.
With Hearn digging up a guy ranked near the bottom of the WBC’s rankings in Zlaticanin, it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the narrow shoulders of the 31-year-old Burns, because if he loses to this guy where in the heck can Hearn move Burns? He’s a chess piece without anywhere to go if he gets whipped by Zlaticanin like he did in his last two fights by Terence Crawford and Raymundo Beltran.
You can say that Burns has been whipped in his last three fights because Jose Gonzalez gave Burns a real beat down last year before suffering a wrist injury in easily the worst performance of Burns’ career up to that point.
“I think you’ll see better movement, I think you’ll see a more intelligent Ricky Burns and you might see more confidence as well which is strange as he is coming off the back of a loss,” Hearn said to the Dailymail.co.uk. “He had an unbelievable run as world champion — he had 10 world title fights on the spin. He’s by no means finished but to lose at this stage and at this level would be a complete nightmare. The pressure is on this Friday,” Hearn said.
Burns and Zlaticanin will be fighting in Burns’ home city on Friday at the Braehead Arena, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Hopefully, there’s no controversy in this bout like there was in Burns’ 12 round draw against Beltran last September. That was a fight where Burns appeared to win 1 round, and yet was still given a 12 round draw. Burns suffered a broken jaw in the 2nd round, and he spent the rest of the fight running and tying Beltran up. How three judges could look at the same fight and score it a draw is hard to understand, but it was easily the worst scored fight I’ve ever seen before in all the years I’ve watching boxing.
Hearn would have been better off finding a good opponent for Burns to fight instead of scouring the bottom of the WBC’s rankings to find Zlaticanin. At least if Hearn had picked someone good like #2 WBC Jorge Linares, Burns and Hearn would have a readymade excuse if he lost to Linares. That’s a good fighter that is well known to even casual boxing fans. But by finding someone that no one has ever heard of before or seen, it just puts Burns in a situation where he’s going to need to think seriously about retiring if he loses to him.
The thing is Burns is pretty vulnerable to anyone in the top 10 at this point in his career because he’s lost a couple of steps. What’s not know is whether the bottom dwelling contenders like Zlaticanin can beat him too or not. We’ll find out on Friday night.
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