Ricky Burn’s bad luck continues, Jose Ocampo pulls out of fight

By Boxing News - 12/10/2012 - Comments

Image: Ricky Burn’s bad luck continues, Jose Ocampo pulls out of fightBy Scott Gilfoid: Oh boy, WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns’ bad luck continues on with yet another opponent pulling out of a scheduled fight with Burns for this Saturday night at the ExCel Arena, Dockland, London, United Kingdom. In this case it’s little known 2nd tier replacement opponent Jose Ocampo, who pulled for unknown reasons.

Burns was previously scheduled to fight fringe contender Liam Walsh, but he had to cancel the fight with Burns after suffering an injury in a car accident. Ocampo was then found to replace Watch, but now Ocampo is gone as well. Burns still plans on Saturday, but it’ll likely be so even weaker than Ocampo and Walsh.

The sad part about this is Burns could end up facing WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner in February of next year, but Burns has not faced anyone that would indicate that he even belongs in the same ring with Broner. Besides that, with Burns not facing well known opposition, it doesn’t help with make the Broner-Burns fight a bigger one.

If Burns is going to face a 2nd tier scrub on Saturday night, which is probably what we’re going to be looking at, how does boxing fans get excited about seeing Broner take on Burns? Broner needs a guy that’s been spanking backside and taking names, not someone that is beating up on little known 2nd tier fighters or guys that have already been beaten and exposed in the past like Kevin Mitchell and Michael Katsidis.

My advice is for Broner to forget about fighting Burns until Burns gets his career sorted out and starts faced the real talents in the lightweight division like Antonio DeMarco, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Jose Gonzalez, Sharif Bogere, Richard Abril, Miguel Vazquez, Sergio Thompson and Jorge Linares.

WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly, who is promoted by the same promoter that Burns is, also had to face a replacement opponent for his recent fight and he ended up taking on little known 2nd tier fighter Shawn Hawk and the World Boxing Organization counted it as a title defense. I wonder if Burns will get the same lucky break by getting a weak sure thing opponent without any risk.



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