By Scott Gilfoid: Michael Katsidis (28-4, 23 KO’s) takes a step down in competition on November 5th in his fight against Scotland’s Ricky Burns (32-2, 9 KO’s) in a fight for the interim WBO lightweight title at the Wembley Arena, Wembley, London, England.

Katsidis has taken some really quality fighters in Robert Guerrero and Juan Manuel Marquez recently, losing to both guys. Now Katsidis is taking an easier mark in Burns, but he’s still going to need to take the fight to Burns and make sure that he doesn’t let this fight go to the cards. Burns may be from Scotland, but he’ll be considered the home fighter for this one and it might take something extra special from Katsidis to make sure he gets his hand raised at the end of the fight.

Katsidis said this to Scotsman.com “He [Burns] is very dangerous, the most dangerous opponent I could have faced. Burns has better boxing ability than both Kevin Mitchell and Graham Earl. Burns is powerful and is a very consistent fighter. He has shown it in the past.”

Katsidis sure is pouring it on kind of thick, isn’t he? There’s no point in going overboard with the compliments of your opponent, Katsidis. Does he really think Burns is the best he could have faced? Really? I sure as heck could have found a mess of better fighters than Burns, starting with Adrien Broner. Burns just moved up in weight and gave up his WBO super featherweight title rather than face Broner. Oh, Burns says he moved up because of weight problems but a lot of boxing fans smell fear. But there’s a lot of good fighters at lightweight that I rate much higher than Burns. I don’t know. I guess Katsidis compliments all of his opponents like this, so you have to put his excessive praise of Burns in perspective.