By Scott Gilfoid: Some fighters you just know they have no chance of winning unless they do something spectacular like poleaxing their opponents. Kevin Mitchell (33-1, 24 KO’s) is one of those fighters who will be in that situation tomorrow night agaisnt WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (34-2, 9 KO’s) in their fight at the Scottish Exhibition Centre in Glasgow, Scotland. Mitchell won’t be able to beat Burns by a decision. That’s just not going to happen. Burns is from Scotland, and the fight is taking place there.

Burns also is someone that has that spoiling manner of fighting with all the clinching he does to shut down his opponents’ offense. It doesn’t matter if Mitchell is able to pry Burn’s off him long enough to land an occasional shot, what matters is that Burns will be grappling with Mitchell enough to keep him from getting his shots off. It’ll then come down to the judges scoring the little action that there is in the fight and figuring who the better man is.

Burns will win it because he’s at home and because as a clincher-type fighter, he knows when he’s going to clinch so that gives him the ability to throw a shot first and then follow it with an ugly. Burns can pretty much do this all night long and and end up winning an ugly, ugly fight. The referee should step in and penalize Burns for clinching so often, but I don’t think he will. Mitchell will be helpless if he can’t get his punches off and he’ll end up losing the fight by a 12 round decision. The only way he can avoid the loss is if he can land a big enough shot to knock Burns out cold.

Neither of these guy are great fighters offensively, but Burns is the better fighter defensively with his clinching and I suspect that will be the difference in this fight. Mitchell has to KO Burns to win or hope the referee will step in and maybe disqualify Burns for clinching so much.