By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO super featherweight champion Ricky Burns (32-3, 9 KO’s) decided not to defend his World Boxing Organization title when it came time for him to finally fight the cream of the division in undefeated Adrien Broner. Burns then moved up in weight and will be fighting Michael Katsidis (28-4, 23 KO’s) on November 5th for the interim WBO lightweight title at the Wembley Arena in London, England.

By moving up in weight, Burns, 28, had dodged one agonizingly difficult fight only to be facing a similar one in Katsidis. It’s the slightly lesser of two undesirable options but not one that promises victory for Burns. You see the problem with Burns is he doesn’t have much power and most of his career he’s faced a lot of lesser fighters that haven’t packed the power to knock him out.

He did fight Roman Martinez, the WBO super featherweight champion in September 2010, but Martinez was already having problems making the super featherweight division weight limit by then and came into the fight in a weakened weight drained condition. Burns was then able to beat him. However, that was the last talented opponent that Burns has fought and even that fight you have to put an asterisk next to it for Burns, because Martinez was struggling with the weight.

Burns will have problems against Katsidis because the Australian can punch and will be coming out to knock him cold. Burns only has one way of fighting and that’s to slug. He’s not much of a boxer and it’s going to make things rather easy for Katsidis, who loves to face guys that come right at him without a lot of power. Katsidis has lost to talented guys like Juan Manuel Marquez, Roberto Guerrero, Juan Diaz and Joel Casamayor in the past few years, but those are really quality fighters and nothing to be ashamed of.

Burns is the type of fighter that Katsidis does really well against and I see him scoring an easy knockout next month to claim the WBO interim lightweight title. Burns can then find a better diet and move back down to super featherweight to try his luck against Broner. I see Burns taking another loss in that fight.