Ricky Burns vs. Alexandre Lepelley and Brian Rose vs. Ignacio Lucero Fraga this Saturday, October 4th

By Boxing News - 10/02/2014 - Comments

rose123By Scott Gilfoid: This Saturday night, former WBO lightweight champ Ricky Burns (36-4-1, 11 KOs) fights Alexandre Lepelley (17-1-1, 3 KOs) at the First Direct Arena, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Also on the card, former world title challenger Brian Rose (25-2-1, 7 KOs) will be fighting Argentinian Ignacio Lucero Fraga (11-7-3, 5 KOs).

Both of these fights will be tune-ups for Burns and Rose, as they’ve been put in with weak opposition to ensure that they get the victories over their opposition. It’s come to that because both Burns and Rose are coming off of losses.

In the case of Burns, he’s lost his last two fights and is in dire straits right now in terms of his career following his surprise lose to his tune-up opponent Dejan Zlaticanin last June.

Burns was supposed to have easily taken care of the little known Zlaticanin, but instead he got dropped by him and took a beating for 12 rounds. Following the loss, it was decided that Burns had trouble making the 135 pound division. So he now is moving up to 140 to try and rejuvenate his career in that weight class. The odds of Burns, a light hitter, being able to compete against the likes of Ruslan Provodnikov and Lucas Matthysse in the light welterweight division are slim at best.

“The Zlaticanin fight was a more crushing defeat than actually losing my World title,” said Burns. “I should have been punching holes in him. When I look back at it, I was really, really struggling to get the weight off, it just wasn’t budging and it did affect my performance. During the fight I knew what was happening but I couldn’t get out of the way of his shots, he was looking for the big overhand left hooks and every time he threw it I knew it was coming but I couldn’t evade them. Trying to boil myself down to 9st 9lbs was just draining the energy out of me so fingers crossed that up here it’s a new start.”

The reality is that Burns hasn’t been punching holes in anybody other than the likes of Kevin Mitchell and Nicky Cook in the last three years. Burns is probably kidding himself if he thinks the reason why he struggled against Zlaticanin was because of the weight.

Burns arguably should have lost his last three fights, not just his last two, because his 12 round draw against Raymundo Beltran last year in September was more of a gift draw than an actual win.

Rose #15 WBO has seen his rankings plummet in the World Boxing Organization rankings following his 7th round knockout loss to WBO junior middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade last June. Rose looked totally outclassed in that fight from the first round, and it was so one-sided that you could have made an argument that the fight, if you want to call it that, should have been stopped by the 4th round due to how one-sided it was.

“Tonight is now the biggest fight of my career,” said Rose. “I need to comeback in style, it’s not just about winning but about performing and coming back with a bang. I don’t want to just scrape a win I want to show that I belong at the top of my own bills in front of my own sell-out crowds and boxing in America, so it starts here with a good performance and a win, getting a few titles and another World title shot.



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