Warren: Burns needs Vazquez’s belt to put him in better bargaining position for Broner fight

By Boxing News - 03/05/2013 - Comments

burns34By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Frank Warren says one of the reasons why he chose to postpone the fight between his fighter WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns and IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez rather than cancel it altogether following the news of Vazquez coming down with an illness that wiped out their March 16th date is because Warren wants Burns to capture Vazquez’s IBF strap so that it’ll put Burns in a better position to bargain for a better deal for a unification bout against WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner.

Warren said on Steve Bunce’s Boxing Hour show on Monday “It’s important for Ricky Burns to win the other belt [IBF] and it will put him in a great bargaining position with Broner…this fight [Burns vs. Vazquez] is 100% and I’m not letting it go…Burns will win a tough, tough fight.”

I honestly don’t see Burns winning that fight against Vazquez, but if he does win it, I see it as one of those fights where he looks more like a loser than a winner, kind of like in Burns’ fight with Michael Katsidis. Burns looked HORRIBLE in that fight, and he spent much of the night just covering up on the ropes while Katsidis unloaded a nonstop flow of punches to the head and body.

Every once in a while, Burns would get in the center of the ring and throw a jab, and then that would be followed by Katsidis unloading on Burns for another minute or two. I had Katsidis winning that fight by 9 rounds to 3, and if Burns wins a fight like that then it won’t matter if he captures Vazquez’s IBF strap because it won’t likely help him get a better deal with Broner.

Golden Boy Promotions will rightly so point out the controversy of the decision and not offer the kind of money that they normally would have if Burns beat Vazqyez without controversy.

At this point I doubt that Broner will still be around by the time Burns is ready to fight him later on in the year because the Burns-Vazquez fight won’t take place until next month on April 20th, and that means that under the best of circumstances, Burns probably won’t be ready to face him until September or October at the earliest.

Depending on how much time Burns says he needs to prepare for the fight, we could be waiting until near the end of the year for that fight to happen. The question is will Broner want to devote that much time in waiting for a guy that most American boxing fans don’t have any idea who Burns is?

Broner would be better off looking to get a fight against the feather-fisted WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi and then campaigning as a welterweight after that. As for Burns, when you snooze you lose. He had a chance three times now to fight Broner, and all three times he failed to take the fight, so he deserves to lose out because of that.



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