By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (35-2, 10 KO’s) says he thinks that WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) may come over to the UK to fight him following his 8th round TKO win over former WBC lightweight champion Antonio DeMarco last Saturday night in New Jersey.
Speaking with RingTV, Burns said “After this fight, [Burns’s December 15th fight date], Broner said he would like a unification fight and there’s a chance he might come over here.”
That’s interesting because Broner said he absolutely wasn’t going to travel over to the UK to fight Burns following his win over DeMarco last Saturday. If Broner changed his mind on that subject then it’s news to me because the last thing he said was that the fight, if it’s going to happen, will have to take place in the United States. It’s not even really a discussion point because Broner is an HBO fighter and there’s no way HBO is going to pay for a fight that would air during the off hours.
I could just see how that would fly. Broner and Burns fight in Scotland or London and the fight is shown live in the U.S at 2 pm, a time where next to no one would be sitting in front of their televisions. Given that HBO is the ones that would be paying the big cash for this fight from Broner’s side it’s safe to say that a Broner-Burns fight will never happen in the UK. If Burns can’t handle that then I guess he’ll continue to tend his own garden over in the UK, likely fighting the likes of Gavin Rees, John Murray and Liam Walsh. In the meantime, Broner will likely be taking on the best guys in the lightweight division like Yuriorkis Gamboa, Mercito Gesta, Miguel Vazquez and Jorge Linares.
Burns has a fight scheduled on December 15th against a still to be determined opponent at the ExCel Arena, in London, United Kingdom. Burns was supposed to fight near bottom ranked Liam Walsh, but he was injured in a car accident. I’m guessing a second tier British fighter will be brought in to take the place of Walsh and the World Boxing Organization will probably count that as a title defense for Burns.
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