By Scott Gilfoid: With a dreadful 1-4-1 record in his last six fights, former two division world champion Ricky Burns (37-5-1, 11 KOs) says he’s looking to take on all the top lightweights after he gets past little known Price Afotsu (15-4, 11 KOs) this Saturday night in their 10 round bout on the undercard of the Luke Campbell vs. Tommy Coyle fight at the Craven Park Stadium, Hull, Yorkshire, UK.

Burns’ career has just really imploded since he beat Jose Gonzalez in a punishing fight in 2013. Burns took a lot of hard head shots against Gonzalez, and he’s not looked the same after since. Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn is hoping to stop the bleeding of Burns’ career by matching him against a soft touch this Saturday against Afotsu, but that doesn’t chance the fact that Burns is likely to continue to struggle once Hearn attempts to put him back in with decent quality fighters.

Right now, Burns would like to face domestic fighters Kevin Mitchell, Anthony Crolla, and Terry Flanagan once he gets Afotsu out of the way. I don’t know if that’s going to work out too well for the 32-year-old Burns because I have doubts whether he can beat even those guys at this point in his career.

“There are so many big fights at lightweight not only in the UK but on the world scene and I can’t wait to get involved in the thick of it,” said Burns, a former two-weight world champion,” Burns said to skysports.com. “It was frustrating before to hear people say that I was being sent out to America to just be an opponent for Figueroa, I proved them wrong.”
Burns didn’t prove anyone wrong with the Figueroa fight, because he lost it by doing too much holding and throwing too many rabbit punches.

Yeah, it was a winnable fight for Burns because Figueroa is a young, limited fighter with marginal skills, who mostly got over as the former WBC lightweight champion by throwing massive amounts of punches against the limited opposition that he faced. Figueroa never fought anyone good like Jorge Linares and Terence Crawford, and he moved up in weight before he was forced to fight Linares. But Burns didn’t prove anything against Figueroa other than the fact that he couldn’t stop holding all night long and finally had to be docked two points for his excessive holding. It was like watching a replay of the Kell Brook vs. Shawn Porter fight from 2014, in which Brook held nonstop for 12 rounds. The only difference is the referee did his job in the Figueroa vs. Burns fight by taking points off from Burns because he just wouldn’t let go of Figueroa to start fighting.

“I will fight anybody, that’s the only way you get the big fights. We aren’t looking at a particular route or governing body – whatever comes our way, we will be ready,” Burns said.
It goes without saying that Burns will be getting some big fights in 2015 and 2016. He’s got Hearn as his promoter, and he has a large stable of fighters in his Matchroom Promotions stable, and he’s got the Sky Sports television contract to get big fights for his fighters against other fighters promoted outside of his Matchroom Sport stable.