By Scott Gilfoid: Here’s the bad news: Fringe lightweight contender Liam Walsh (13-0, 10 KO’s) has suffered a bad back injury in an automobile accident and won’t be able to challenge WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (35-2, 10 KO’s) in an all Brit match-up that was looked upon by many boxing fans as a TERRIBLE mismatch on December 15th. Now the good news. It probably won’t be hard to find a much better opponent than Walsh to face Burns on 12/15.

What we don’t want to see is another Nathan Cleverly type affair where the original opponent, little known contender Ryan Coyne, was replaced by a 2nd tier fighter in Shawn Hawk and it ended up being a one-sided fight that was hardly interesting to watch. With a month to go before December 15th there should be more than enough time to pick out a top 15 lightweight contender that can replace Walsh and give Burns a much better fight.

If the goal is to find another Brit ranked in the top 15th, then yeah, it might be tough. But I’m hoping that’s not what happens here. There are plenty of good eating fish in the lightweight sea, and it doesn’t need to be a Brit that faces Burns. How about putting Burns with someone like Hanky Lundy, Anthony Peterson, Urbano Antillon, Ji-Hoon Kim, Sergio Thompson, Jose Gonzalez, Miguel Acosta, Marvin Quintero or Darley Perez. I rate all of those fighters as MUCH, MUCH better fighters than Liam Walsh. How about putting Burns in with one of them?

I have a sinking suspicion that a 2nd tier local lad will be found from one of the British gyms to be thrown in there with Burns and will have another Cleverly vs. Hawks type mismatch. God, that’ll be terrible, especially if the World Boxing Organization bless it as a world title defense for Burns, just as they did for Cleverly. How can you count those types of fights as world title defenses if the opposition isn’t even ranked in the top tier?