By Sean McDaniel: Making his first defense of his WBO lightweight title champion Ricky Burns (34-2, 9 KO’s) easily beat #4 WBO ranked contender former WBA lightweight champion Paulus Moses (28-2, 19 KO’s) by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Braehead Arena, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. The final judges’ scores were 119-110, 120-110 and 117-111.

Burns, 28, did an excellent job of jabbing, moving and blocking most everything Moses attempted to offer up in terms of offense. Burns was quick to shut Moses down when he would come in range by clinching him after hitting him with combinations. The fight was well out of hand by the 6th round, as Moses didn’t have the work rate, the power or the accuracy needed to succeed. It was a completely one-sided fight from start to finish and Moses never really did get anything going in this rather one-sided fight.

As good as Burns looked in the fight, he appeared to win it on size alone. He looked huge in weight and my guess is Burns weighed over 150 for the fight, which would be a 15 pound gain from the 135 pound weigh-in limit for the lightweight division. Burns looked a lot heavier than Moses, and the extra weight seemed to benefit him greatly. In addition, Burns’ work was done for him by Moses, who failed to throw enough punches in the fight. When he did land a big right hand from time to time, it wasn’t enough to move Burns because of his huge size. Burns was like the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. of the lightweight division in this fight. He was able to use his size effectively to control the thinner and lighter Moses without too many problems.

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Appleby defeats Ormond

In undercard action, former British featherweight champion Paul Appleby (18-3, 11 KO’s) rebounded from a defeat in his last fight against Liam Walsh to defeat Stephen Ormond (11-1, 5 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decisions to capture the vacant BBBofC Celtic super featherweight title. Appleby won by the scores of 96-94, 96-94 and 96-95.

In other action on the card:

Stephen Simmons TKO 6 Hastings Rasani
Callum Johnson TKO 1 Tommy Tolan