By Scott Gilfoid: Kiryl Relikh (21-0, 19 KOs) has got the most impressive knockout percentage of any opponent Ricky Burns (40-5-1, 14 KOs) has ever faced before in his career, but he’s not worried about his power. The two fighters will be facing each other on Friday night at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.
Burns, 33, will be defending his WBA World light welterweight title for the first time. Burns is expected to be able to successfully defend his belt. The reason for that is Relikh doesn’t have the experience to fighting for a world title, even against an aging fighter like Burns, who clearly has seen better days in his career.
Yeah, Burns is a world champion, but mostly in name only. He beat a weak fighter named Michele Di Rocco to get the vacant WBA title last May, and now he’s facing a guy with no experience and an inflated resume in my opinion.
“He’s got a lot of KOs on his record so he can obviously punch a bit, but it’s the level of opposition that he’s been knocking out,” said Burns via Fight News. “He can dig a bit but we’re not treating this any differently to any other fight I’ve had. I’ve had a good long camp for this one so there’s no fears for me.”
This is what I was afraid of. Burns sounding cocky, and clearly overlooking Relikh. Burns is probably already thinking about the big money fight against Adrien Broner that will be coming next for hm if he wins this fight on Friday night against the little known Relikh. That’s not good. Believe me, it’s always bad news when you get a light hitting old lion like Burns flapping his gums about a young no name lion. It doesn’t matter if Relikh probably should be ranked around No.25 rather than No.1 in the WBA’s rankings. He’s still young and has a little bit of pop in his punches.
The blueprint is already there in how to beat Burns by jumping on him and turning the fight into a war. We saw how Dejab Zlaticanin, Raymundo Beltran, and Omar Figueroa all did that to beat him. Beltran didn’t get the win over Burns, but he definitely beat him in my mind. It was an easy win for Beltran, and all he did was slug.
Well, it’s obvious that Relikh hasn’t been facing good opposition. He’s been knocking out everyone, but the guys that he’s been stopping re basically no names. We have no idea how Relikh react when he gets inside the ring with Burns on Saturday night because the experience isn’t there for the Belarusian fighter. That’s why it’s really disappointing that the World Boxing Association has Relikh ranked No.1 with their organization. It’s the same thing they did with Michele Di Rocco last May. That was Burns’ last opponent. Di Rocco was ranked above a TON of talented fighters at 140. When he got inside the ring with Burns, Di Rocco looked like a 2nd tier fighter that didn’t rate a No.1 ranking. I don’t know why the WBA had Di Rocco ranked where he was, but I guess the organization had their reasons. The same holds true for Relikh. He has zero experience against quality opposition, and yet he’s ranked No.1 with them. Why? The WBA has their reasons for ranking Relikh above talented light welterweights like Rances Barthelemy, Omar Figueroa Jr., John Molina Jr., Frankie Gomez, Antonio Orozco, Adrian Granzados and Ruslan Provodnikov. Those guys are all ranked below Relikh in the WBA’s rankings for some reason. It’s weird, confusing and seemingly crazy at the same time. To me, if this were football, it would be like ranking the worst team at the top of the rankings and the best teams in the middle.
“We’re expecting a tough fight. Conor Benn trained alongside him before and did a bit of sparring with him and he said that he can punch, but we’re confident of getting the job done,” said Burns about Relikh.
I wonder what else Benn said about Relikh to Burns. With the way Burns has looked in the last three years, he shouldn’t make the mistake that he can beat any decent fighter, because he’s too long in the tooth, too weak and too flawed. I mean, I don’t think for a second that Burns could beat the top light welterweights in the division. If you threw Frankie Gomez, Barthlemey, Viktor Postol, Antonio Orozco or Eduard Troyanovsky inside the ring with Burns, I think he would be totally dominated. Burns is a decent paper champion, but that’s all he is in my opinion.