Hearn: Burns would face Broner in U.S

By Boxing News - 05/30/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn says his fighter Ricky Burns (40-5-1, 14 KOs) would be open to traveling to the United States to face former four division world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner in order to get the fight.

Hearn is very interested in making that fight happen. Hearn says Broner’s management sent a congratulations message to him and Burns, and he sees this as a sign that they’ll be looking to contact them in the near future to start negotiations.

Burns won the vacant WBA World light welterweight title last Saturday night in beating the highly ranked #1 WBA Michele Di Rocco (40-2-1, 18 KOs) by an 8th round knockout at The SSE Hydro, in Glasgow, Scotland. Burns knocked Di Rocco down in the 8th, and referee Terry O’Connor stopped the fight at 1:57 of the round after Di Rocco got back to his feet and staggered around the ring briefly.

Hearn said: “If you are talking about Adrien Broner, we would travel to the States for that,” said Hearn via the dailyrecord. “They’ve already been on to congratulate us, Broner’s guys. They sent congratulations, which means, ‘We’ll be in touch.’”

Burns had a chance to fight Broner in the past five years ago when the two were fighting in the super featherweight division. Burns was at a high point in his career and chose not to take the fight. In hindsight, it was a blunder on Burns’ part because his fortunes changed in his career five fights later when he was held to a controversial 12 round draw against Raymundo Beltran in September 2013. When I say controversial, I mean Burns got a draw in a fight that many boxing fans saw him losing BADLY.

I gave Burns only one round in that fight. That’s how bad off Burns was against Beltran. Burns suffered a broken jaw in the 2nd round, and lost every round from that point on in my view. I didn’t see it as being close. It just a one-sided beat down with very, very strange scores at the end of it. Just picture in your mind the most one-sided fight you can imagination.

Now imagine the fight being scored a draw. That’s what we had with the Burns vs. Beltran fight. It was a sad occasion for Beltran. The punishment Burns took in that fight seemed to take something out of him because he then lost three out of his last four fights after that. It was only recently that Burns turned his career around, thanks to the great match-making by Hearn. He’s won his last three fights beating Di Rocco, Josh King and Prince Ofotsu. I’ve got to admit, I’d never heart of Ofotsu and Josh King until Burns fought them.

I was vaguely familiar with Di Rocco. He’s not been a major player fighting top contenders. He’s been facing European level opposition, and not really high quality opposition. The World Boxing Associations’ ranking for Di Rocco in installing him as the No.1 contender in their rankings made it easy for Burns to win the WBA title because he didn’t have to deal with a difficult opponent.

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If Burns had to fight Ruslan Provodinikov, who the WBA inexplicably had ranked below Di Rocco, it would have been a MUCH tougher fight for Burns, I suspect he would have tasted defeat again. Provodnikov is like a better version of Beltran and Dejan Zlaticanin, two fighters that gave Burns major problems.

“They can make all the offers they want. We’ll listen,” said Hearn about Broner’s management. “If they want to come with a sack load of money for Ricky to defend his title against Broner in Vegas, I’m sure there are a few Scots who would like a trip there.”

I don’t know if Broner’s management is going to come with a sack-load of money for a fight against Burns, because there are arguably bigger fights out there for Broner than this one. I do Broner’s manager Al Haymon might make a decent offer to Hearn and Burns if they see value in that fight being made.

I don’t know if the fight would resonate in the United States like it would in the UK. I think it would be no bigger than Broner’s recent fights against Ashley Theophane and Khabib Allakhkiev. Those were not big fights for Broner, but they were easy ones. Burns is lacking in the punching power department, and I think he would be a very easy fight for Broner.

it might be better for Broner to go over to the UK to fight Burns in Scotland if that’s where the bigger pay check can be made. I’m pretty sure that Broner would make sure that the fight never made it to the judges. If he did, then it will likely be so one-sided that the fight couldn’t wind up with a controversial decision. It’s hard to picture Broner agreeing to fight Burns in the UK, even if it meant him getting a bigger payday. I don’t think Broner would want to chance it.