By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (35-2, 10 KO’s) must be feeling pretty good right about now after having blown out his #2 WBO challenger Kevin Mitchell by an easy 4th round TKO last Saturday night. There’s already been talk of Burns fighting 35-year-old ring rusty former WBO featherweight champion Scott Harrison (27-2-2, 15 KO’s) next in what would have to be considered a nice little title milking fighting for Burns. Harrison, by the way, is a fellow Scot like Burns, and the fight would probably make good money for Burns.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news for Burns and his loyal fans. The WBO president Francisco Valcarcel is saying that Burns has to fight his mandatory challenger now and that just happens to be Adrien Broner.

Valcarcel said this on the wboboxing.com website: “Last weekend, Ricky Burns successfully faced Kevin Mitchell at the Scottish Exhibition Center in Glasgow, Scotland. The press has been speculating with the possibility of Harrison landing the winner of the Burns-Mitchell bout. However, Burns’ next bout will be his mandatory and Harrison is not even classified.”

Ouch, that hurts! What this means of course is that there won’t be a Burns-Harrison fight next, at least not until Burns faces and beats his mandatory challenger. The good news for Burns is that he could catch a HUGE break in that Broner is taking on WBC lightweight champion Antonio DeMarco on November 17th and likely won’t be available to fight Burns unless Broner loses to DeMarco, which is highly doubtful given Broner’s incredible talent, and wants to jump back in the ring to fight Burns in early 2013. It’s possible but not likely because Broner won’t lose to to DeMarco, so he won’t be a contender at that point.

The next leading contenders that could fill the gap left by Broner are as follows:

#3 Sharif Bogere
#4 Jose Gonzalez
#5 Sergio Thompson

Any one of those guys would be extremely dangerous for Burns if they were to take the fight. However, there’s always a chance that none of them will be available to take the fight due to schedule conflicts. In that case one of the following fighters could step up to take the fight:

#6 Marvin Quintero
#7 Ji-Hoon Kim
#8 Gavin Rees

Oh, I imagine that Burns would love to get a fight with the Brit Gavin Rees, but I highly doubt that Rees would get the fight because one of the aforementioned fighters ranked above him will likely take the fight with Burns.

If Burns has to fight Bogere, Thompson or Gonzalez, he’s going to have some real problems against one of those talents. If Broner takes the title shot, it pretty much goes without saying that he’s going to give Burns a royal beating in taking his WBO title away from him in his front of his own fans. I just don’t think Broner is going to be available, however, because he’s going to whip DeMarco on November 17th and will be the new WBC champion. The only way we could see a Broner-Burns fight then is if Burns agreed to fight Broner in a unification bout. I’m not counting on that happening in this lifetime. Broner is just too good and he’d end the Burns reign with ease.