By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World light welterweight champion Ricky Burns (41-5-1, 14 Kos) defeated #1 WBA challenger Kiryl Relikh (21-1, 19 KOs) by a controversial 12 round unanimous decision on Friday night at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. The judges scored the fight 118-110, 116-112, and 116-112 for Burns. Relikh had Burns hurt in the 11th and 12th rounds. Burns was gassed, hurt and totally ineffective in the last two rounds of the contest. You can argue that Burns was done after the 8th, because Relikh swept rounds 9 through 12 on my scorecard. If you count those four rounds with the first two rounds, then Relikh deserved a draw. But I had Relikh winning other rounds as well, so he should have won. Relikh did win and quite easily in my opinion.
Relikh knocked Burns down in the 12th with a peach of a right hand, but the referee didn’t give him credit for it. I wasn’t surprised.
Burns did a great deal of holding and running in the fight, especially in the last four rounds. It was one clinch after another from Burns. Relikh finally got a little frustrated with Burns’ holding in the 9th, and gave him a beautiful shoulder to the head while in a clinch. Instead of the referee having words with Burns about his excessive holding, he spent valuable time lecturing Relikh about his shoulder. The referee should have taken it as a sign that Burns was holding nonstop and did something about it. Relikh was trying to actually fight, but he had Burns hanging on him like an octopus, hitting him behind the head with rabbit shots. It was interesting that the referee didn’t make a big production about Burns’ rabbit punches. He makes a big deal about Relikh’ shoulder, but not the rabbit punches.
Relikh appeared to win rounds 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Burn gassed out badly in the second half of the fight, and wilted under the furious pressure from Relikh. The cheering for Burns’ rare shots landed made it appear that he was doing better than he was. Burns wasn’t doing well. He was missing like mad and holding like no tomorrow. The thing of it was the pro-Burns crowd was ghostly silent each time Relikh would land anything, so you could argue that the judges were responding to crowd noise rather than the actual fight that took place inside the ring tonight. I had to turn off the sound because the commentators seemed to be watching a completely different fight than the one that was taking place inside the ring. Relikk would land six consecutive head shots, and then Burns would land a single punch. The commentators would then talk about the punch Burns landed rather than the six shots he’d eaten. I couldn’t understand that, so I turned the sound off and I was able to get an accurate picture of what was happening in the fight.
Boxing News 24 scored the fight 118-110 for Relikh. I thought it was a nice robbery; although I never thought for a second that Relikh had any chance of getting a decision in this fight. The 118-110 score by one of the judges shows you what Relikh was up against in this fight. He needed a knockout for him to have chance of winning. Yes, the scoring was dreadful. Yes, Relikh deserved the win. What can you do?
With this win, Burns, 33, will be fighting former four division world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner next. That fight is good for boxing, so I think it’s nice that it’ll be taking place. But as far as Burns winning, no way will he do that. Broner hits too hard, he’s too big, and far too talented for Burns. I’m just saying.
The 10th round saw Burns just RUNNING instead of fighting. It was like watching Kell Brook running from Gennady Golovkin in the 5th round. Burns looked panicked, and wasn’t even bothering about even trying to fake like he was still fighting. It was just flat out running from Burns. I’d love to see the judges’ scorecards for rounds 10 through 12, because there’s now way that Burns deserved to win any of those rounds. He was in the retreat mode in the last four rounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the judges had Burns winning those rounds, because they saw a different fight than I did. Late in the 10th round, Relikh landed a huge right hand to the head of Burns that took all the life out of him. After that shot landed, Burns looked like a spent battery. He was just gone.
Relikh’s trainer Ricky Hatton gave a huge pep talk before he went out for the 11th round. Basically, Hatton told Relikh to go out and knock Burns’ lights out, which is exactly what he did. Relikh hurt Burns with a huge left hook to the head. Burns then ran around the ring trying to survive, but it was no use. Relikh caught Burns against the ropes and hit him with 15 consecutive punches to the head and body with all the shots landing. The crowd did’t make a peep while Relikh was working Burns over. But as soon as Burns finally landed a weak right hand to the head of Relikh, the crowd erupted in a huge roar of applause for Burns, as he was doing well. Relikh ignored the crowd and put them back into the silence mode by nailing Burns with 12 more unanswered blows to the head and body to finish out the round.
I came away from watching tonight’s Burns vs. Relikh fight very, very impressed with what I saw from Relikh. This guy has loads of talent. If he had just fought rounds three through eight like he did rounds 1-2 and 9-12, he would have won the fight. I mean, I still think Relikh deserved the win, but he could have fought better if he had emulated Gennady Golovkin. The way that Relikh finished the fight was similar to how Golovkin fights.
I think Burns would have been completely destroyed tonight if he had faced the likes of Rances Barthlemey, Broner, Frankie Gomez, John Molina Jr. and Antonio Orozco tonight. Those guys were all ranked BELOW Relikh. They would have gone after Burns from the 1st round and put him in serious distress.