Ricky Burns signs with Matchroom Sport, fights on May 11th

By Boxing News - 03/11/2013 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: As expected, WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns has left his promoter Frank Warren and signed with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport. In response, Warren said he still has Burns under contract and he plans on suing Burns.

Hearn said he’s looked over the contract and he feels confident that Burns can terminate with Warren.

As for Burns’ previously scheduled April 20th fight date against IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez, that’s not going to happen according to Hearn. He plans on having Burns fight next on May 11th in Scotland, but not against Vazquez. He wants Burns to fight three times in the remainder of the year in May, September and December.

Obviously, it goes without saying that if Burns is going to be fighting that often he’s likely not going to be taking on anyone dangerous other than one mandatory defense of his World Boxing Organization title followed by two easy optional title defenses. Hearn wants Burns to be fighting in Scotland rather than London in his fights in order to take advantage of his large fan base over there.

Hearn said to I Film London “Having seen the termination letters, I’m very, very comfortable [Burns can leave Warren]. Ricky is very comfortable. I don’t foresee a problem. I expect initial aggression somewhere down the line, but we’ve dealt with the same thing with Tony Bellew…The key is to build him [Burns] in Scotland. He has a huge fan base. I’d like three fights in seven months’ time. I’d like May 11th, early September, and December. It’s [Miguel Vazquez] I see happening on May 11th. It’s a good fight, a tough fight, but I’d like Ricky to go into the fight with a lot of momentum. People talk about the Broner fight. That’s a really tough fight. If you go into a fight like that, you need great momentum psychologically. I want to build him in Scotland and bring Broner to Scotland. That’s the first thing that Ricky said to me. He wants that fight. He’s a great entertainer, but Ricky’s also a world champion. I’d like to see the look on Broner’s face when he’s asked by his promoters to go to Scotland to fight Ricky Burns.”

Hearn can pretty much forget all about Broner coming to Scotland to fight Burns. To be sure, Burns is a world champion, but he’s not perceived to be in the same class as Broner in terms of talent when you get outside of the UK.

Yeah, you can probably ask 1000 Brits whether Burns can beat Broner and they’ll pretty much say yes, but that’s not the answer you’ll get if you ask people outside of the UK. They see Burns as fodder for Broner, and they’d be right. Burns doesn’t have the power, speed or defensive skills to beat Broner, and for that reason Broner isn’t going to waste time going to the lesser fighter’s home country to fight. I mean, Hearn can ask, but the answer is going to be no.

I’m not sure if Hearn has been keeping track of the boxing news lately, but if he had he’d realize that Burns already blew his chance at fighting Broner. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer already said as much last Saturday night at the Bernard Hopkins – Tavoris Cloud post fight press conference. Schaefer said “We were chasing Ricky Burns for a while, we offered him a lot of money but he didn’t want to take it.”

Broner is now fighting WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi on June 22nd, and the chances are that Broner will stay at welterweight after that fight. If anything, he might fight some guys at 140, but he’s certainly not going to move back down to 135 to fight a guy that American boxing fans have never heard of and don’t care about.

Americans want to see Broner fight Lucas Matthysse, Lamont Peterson, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan [to a certain extent], Victor Ortiz, Devon Alexander and Keith Thurman. Ricky Burns isn’t on the radar screen for who U.S fans want to see Broner in with. That would be another Gavin Rees fight, it really would, and that’s not a big enough fight to do anything for Broner’s career.



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