By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn ruled out a rematch against the hard-hitting Jose Gonzalez last night after Burns dodged a bullet in beating him on an injury stoppage after the 9th round in Glasgow, Scotland.
Hearn wants Burns to fight in September in Glasgow. He didn’t mention who the opponent will be, but it seems pretty obvious that they’ll go soft with a nice bottom dwelling contender for Burns’ voluntary defense.
It makes a ton of sense for Burns to fight Gonzalez again because when you get dominated for the first seven rounds of the fight like Burns was; it tells you that his skills just weren’t matching up well with Gonzalez.
The fight changed after the injury to Gonzalez’s wrist. But Hearn wants to keep Burns as the WBO champion as long as possible, so putting him back in with a guy that was dominating it probably not a good way to keep Burns a champion for long.
As it is, it doesn’t look like Burns has much time left as the WBO champion because he looks slower and I think the competition is catching up to him. One of Burns’ biggest advantages over his opposition has been his size, but when you start slowing down it doesn’t matter if you’re bigger or not.
Your fights are going to get more difficult until you get spanked. I think we saw last night that Burns will be lucky to remain the WBO champion for another year unless Hearn matches him carefully.
In looking at the bottom rankings for the lightweight division, I can see Hearn matching Burns with #14 WBO Liam Walsh next. That’s a nice little easy mismatch for Burns. He should be able to whip Walsh with no problems, and Walsh being a Brit will make it even better for Hearn and Burns.
The flipside of the equation is if Hearn matches Burns up against #2 WBO Sergio Thompson, then we could see Burns lose his WBO title because Thompson can really punch. However, I can’t see that happening.
I don’t think for a second that Hearn will select a slugger like Thompson to put in with Burns because the chances are too high that Burns would lose the fight, and they want to keep him as the champion for as long as possible.
IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez is a possibility. He can’t punch and he mostly just moves around slapping with shots and trying to make his opponents look bad. It would be a difficult fight for Burns for different reasons.
Vazquez is hard to hit and he’s skillful at counter punching and it would put the judges in the hot seat where they would potentially create controversy with whatever decision they come up with.
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