Ricky Burns battles Prince Ofotsu this Saturday in Hull

By Boxing News - 07/27/2015 - Comments

Omar Figueroa vs Ricky BurnsBy Scott Gilfoid: In a must win situation, former two division world champion Ricky Burns (37-4-1, 11 KOs) tangles with prospect Prince Ofotsu (15-4, 11 KOs) this Saturday night in a 10 round bout at the

Craven Park Stadium, in Hull, Yorkshire, UK. Burn’s record in his last five fights has been nothing short of dreadful. He’s only won one fight in his last five bouts. His record is 1-3-1 during that time period.

The draw that Burns received against Raymundo Beltran in September 2013 was a gift draw in a fight where you can argue that Burns deserved to win maybe two out of the twelve rounds if you were being generous to him. So we’re really talking about a fighter who has a record of 1-4 in his last five fights.

Burns lost his last fight to former WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa by a 12 round decision by the scores of 116-110, 116-110 and 117-109 last May in Hidalgo, Texas. It was a winnable fight for Burns if he’d just let his hands go and not spent so much time holding all night long. Burns wound up losing a point for his holding in rounds 8 and 11. I mean, there was nothing controversial about the point deductions because Burns just wouldn’t stop holding onto Figueroa for some reason. It was like watching a replay of Burns’ fight against Beltran in which Burns held him any chance he could get in order to keep him from hitting him on his broken jaw. I had the feeling that Burns didn’t trust his own ability to take Figueroa’s hard power shots, so he wound up holding him all night long to keep him from getting his punches off.

Ofutsu, who comes from Ghana, hasn’t fought in a year and a half since being stopped in the 8th round by Richard Commey in December 2013. Obviously, Ofutsu was selected by Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn due to him being so inactive and not being good enough to have a good chance of beating Burns. Hearn needs to rebuild Burns, and I believe the only way he can do that is to put him in with weak opposition like Ofutsu so that he can past his resume and possibly get his confidence up.

Burns is moving back down to the lightweight division for the fight against Ofutsu. Burns says he easily made weight for his fight at light welterweight last May, and that made him think that he belongs at lightweight. Well see whether that’s the case or not. My guess is if Burns looks bad against Ofutsu, he’ll blame it on his struggles to make weight for the lightweight contest. He’ll then move back up to 140 to try and make something happen up there.

“I knew coming in (to the Figueroa fight) that I would make junior welterweight far too easily,” Burns said via RingTV.com. “My training camp went really well but I was able to eat freely all the way up until the day before the weigh in.”

The Burns vs. Ofotsu fight will be on the Luke Campbell vs. Tommy Coyle. Also on the card is heavyweight Dillian Whyte in action in getting ready for his big fight against Anthony Joshua later this year.



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