By Scott Gilfoid: In an exciting fight, unbeaten former WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa (25-0-1, 18 KOs) defeating a constantly holding former two division world champion Ricky Burns (37-5-1, 11 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the State Farm Arena in Hidalgo, Texas. Figueroa hurt Burns with a left to the body in the 11th round that had him holding on.
The final judges’ scores were 116-110, 116-110 and 117-109.
I agree with the 117-109 score except I think Burns should be disqualified.
With the 32-year-old Burns grabbing like an eight-armed octopus, referee Laurence Cole was forced to deduct points from him in the 8th and the 11th rounds. Burns was very lucky he wasn’t disqualified because his constant holding really marred what would have been a great fight. I still can’t erase the image of all the holding Burns did from my mind. It was just so, so ugly.
I was surprised that Cole didn’t pull the plug on the fight early by disqualifying Burns because the guy just couldn’t keep his hands off of Figueroa. He was holding nonstop, and throwing rabbit punches like no tomorrow. Burns also hitting on the break. Between the rabbit shots, hitting on the break and the constant holding, Burns was able to survive the full 12 rounds without getting knocked out.
For a fighter that many boxing fans think is shot, Burns did a pretty good job in there. Now if he had just been able to fight without all that God awful holding, he might have had a chance to get a draw out of the fight. But he just couldn’t stop holding. Having seen many of Burns’ fights over the year, I would rank this fight as the tops in terms of his holding. I mean, Burns held constantly in fights against Raymundo Beltran, Paulus Moses, Jose Gonzalez and Michael Katsidis, but I think this fight has to be the No.1 for Burns in the holding department.
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WBA bantamweight belt holder Jamie McDonnell (26-2-1, 12 KOs) defeated challenger Tomoki Kameda (31-1, 19 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision. The judges scored the fight 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113. I thought Kameda had done more than enough to get a draw. It looked like curtains for McDonnell by the 8th round, but he was able to rally to win the decision. Like I said, I had the fight scored a draw. McDonnell didn’t do enough to earn a decision in my view.
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Former WBA junior middleweight champion Austin “No Doubt” Trout (29-2, 16 KOs) dominated an over-matched substitute Luis Galarza (21-3, 15 KOs) in pummeling him around the ring until stopping him in the 7th. It was a good win for Trout, but then again he didn’t have much to work with in terms of his opponent.
Trout needs to step it up again because this was his third straight mismatch since his loss to Erislandy Lara two years ago in 2013. Trout has burned up two years of his career in fighting weak opposition. At 29, he doesn’t have a lot of time to spend fighting 2nd tier fighter over and over again.
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Other boxing results on the card:
Austin Trout TKO 7 Luis Galarza
Darwin Price KO 1 Juan Ovalle
Enrique Alvarez TKO 3 Alberto Espinoza
Brandon Figueroa UD 4 Hector Gutierrez
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