By Scott Gilfoid: A unification fight between WBA World light welterweight champion Ricky Burns and IBF champ Julius Indongo is in the works for April, according to Burns’ manager Alex Morrison. The Burns- Indongo match-up will take place in Glasgow, Scotland. That’s here Burns lives, and it would obviously give him a tremendous advantage over the 33-year-old Indongo (21-0, 11 KOs).
The idea is for Burns to beat Indongo, and then move forward to a big fight in Las Vegas, Nevada later this year against possibly former four division world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner. Burns was mentioned as a possibility last week by Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach as one of the two options for his April 23 fight. However, it now looks like Pacquiao will be fighting little known Australian Jeff Horn on that date in Brisbane, Australia.
Another fight that Burns was reportedly kicking around was against 36-year-old former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi. Not surprisingly, Burns received a ton of criticism about that news, as Malignaggi is no longer a top 15 ranked contender in boxing, and he’s done precious little since losing to Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter.
“Indongo showed how dangerous he is against the Russian,” Alex Morrison said to the dailyrecord.co.uk. “He is unbeaten in 21 fights and he is not to be underestimated. It’s a huge opportunity for Ricky. It’s a chance to get his hands on three of the super lightweight belts. That would make him a wanted man. The best in the world would be beating his door down,” said Morrison.
The southpaw Indongo knocked out previously unbeaten IBF 147lb champion Eduard Troyanovsky in the 1st round with a big left hand in their fight last month on December 3 at the Khodnyka Ice Palace in Moscow, Russia. As impressive as the win was for Indongo, it was clear that Troyanovsky was going to get knocked out sooner or later by someone. In his previous fight against an over-matched Keita Obara, Troyanovsky was taking some heavy shots that were landing clean without him even seeing the shots. It seemed to me that Troyanovsky’s ability to track incoming punches was not there for him, and that he would have huge problems once he faced someone with decent power.
Indongo is not a huge puncher despite getting the knockout. The main reason Indongo knocked Troyanovsky out was because the Russian fighter was too slow in getting his guard up to try and block the badly telegraphed left hand from Indongo. The 33-year-old Indongo threw the left from a mile a away and still landed it cleanly.
Burns (41-5-1, 14 Kos) beat Kiryl Relikh by a 12 round unanimous decision in his last fight in October in a fight much closer than the scores handed down from the three judges. The fight took place in Glasgow.
Burns still hasn’t beaten anyone good in years. Much has been said about his boxing career having been rejuvenated from his training, but I don’t see it that way. I think what’s happened is Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn put him in a good situation where Burns was matched up against little known fighter Michele Di Rocco for the vacant WBA title. That’s a fight that arguably anyone in the division would have won, because Di Rocco had never shown himself to be a No.1 type of talent in the past. It was the World Boxing Association that decided to rank him there. As such, Burns had no problems beating this guy. Now if the WBA had ranked an actual talented fighter at No.1 like Rances Barthelemy or Frankie Gomez, then we probably wouldn’t be talking about Burns vs. Indongo right now. One of those guys would be going after Indongo to win an easy IBF strap.
Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn said this to skysports.com about the Burns vs. Indongo fight:
“Indongo is a very dangerous opponent and coming off a huge first round knockout in Russia but after missing out on unifications at super featherweight and lightweight, I’m hopeful of delivering some good news this week,” said Hearn.
In looking at some of Indongo’s past fights in the last two years, he’s not looked good at all. Indongo looks sloppy for the most part. His form breaks down quickly in his fights, and he throws a lot of wild shots that leaves him open to getting hit. Occasionally, Indongo can land a good left hand when he uses proper form, but a lot of the time, he’s throwing wild punches without much power on them. He looks very, very mediocre to me. You can kind of get an indication of how limited Indongo is when you look at his fights against Ibrahim Class and Kaizer Mabuza. Indongo had HUGE problems against both of those guys. I don’t see either of those fighters as world class, and yet Indongo struggled against both of them.
If Burns beats Indongo, I imagine Hearn will start crowing about the win and start yapping about how Burns is the best fighter in the division. I don’t think Burns would even be the 10th best fighter at 140. Beating Indongo will only mean that Burns defeated another BADLY flawed fighter. I’d like to see Burns fight someone that’s actually good like Barthelemy, Frankie Gomez, Adrien Broner, Viktor Postol, Terence Crawford, Adrian Granados or Felix Diaz.