By Scott Gilfoid: Despite not exactly wowing the York Hall crowd last Friday night in winning a dull safety first 10 round unanimous decision over the stronger journeyman Felix Lora, Kevin Mitchell (33-1, 24 KO’s) is predicting that he’ll move on and win a world title by this summer against WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns.

Mitchell told the BBC Sport “I’ll be a world champion in the summer, I promise you,” said Mitchell. I’ll have another fight in March and we’ll fight Burns in the summer. Ricky Burns is a lovely lad but I’m going to have to beat him.”

That sounds like a pipe dream if I ever saw one. Mitchell will be fighting on March 16th against another likely weak opponent, and yeah, Mitchell will probably be facing World Boxing Organization lightweight champion Burns in the summer like he says he will – if Burns beats the talented Paulus Moses on March 10th – but Mitchell isn’t going to beat Burns. That’s not going to happen.

Burns may be a paper champion in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, but he’s got an excellent jabs, nice left hook and just overall much better skills than Mitchell. Burns will win that fight decisively by a lopsided 12 round decision. Burns isn’t much of a puncher, but I can see him knocking Mitchell out in this fight because he’ll frustrate the heck out of the Brit with his jab and long reach.

Mitchell will fall quickly behind in the fight and then out of a combination of frustration and desperation, he’ll start bum rushing Burns like a mad dog. This will play right into Burns’ hands, because he’s good at picking off fighters that fight in a primitive manner. He’ll rack up the points round after round until he tags Mitchell with a big left hand right in the puss and send him down for the count. That’ll be Mitchell’s big fight in the summer, but unfortunately he’s going to lose that fight quite badly.