By Scott Gilfoid: With the World Boxing Organizations pushing unbeaten American talent Terence Crawford (21-0, 16 KO’s) to number 1 in their lightweight rankings, he is now poised for a title shot against WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’).
If you thought Burns had problems against a superb fighter like Adrien Broner, just imagine what it’ll be like for him facing Crawford. With Broner, Burns was able to simply say no to the fight and not have to worry about getting stripped of his title by the WBO.
But with Crawford now Burns’s #1 challenger, Burns has no other choice but to face him or do what he did when faced with Broner as his mandatory, vacate the title and move up in weight. I’m really hoping doesn’t pull that move like he did in 2011 when Broner was his WBO mandatory challenger at super flyweight.
Interestingly enough, Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn is saying that the Burns-Crawford fight could happen, albeit in Glasgow, Scotland.
Hearn said to Sky Sports “There is talk already of Burns against a young fighter called Terence Crawford at Madison Square Garden. Crawford is an HBO fighter. But Ricky has tremendous support up here in Glasgow and I think we can make those big fights here.”
So what is Hearn saying? Is he saying that he’s just now looked at the rankings and discovered what we already knew ages ago that Crawford is Burns #1 challenger. Is Hearn saying that unless the fight takes place in Glasgow it won’t happen at all? I hope this isn’t the prelude to Burns vacating his title, because I think this would be the perfect excuse for him to dump the strap rather than facing Crawford and take a serious hiding from him in the U.S.
None of this will mean a thing if Burns can’t even get past Raymundo Beltran (28-6, 17 KO’s) on September 7th at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. That’s going to be a really tough fight for Burns, and I can see him losing badly, or losing badly but still getting the win in Glasgow, Beltran is a better fighter than Burns’ last opponent Jose Gonzalez, and we saw what Gonzalez did to Burns for the first 8 rounds of their fight last May.
Beltran won’t run out of gas the way that Gonzalez did, and he’s going to be a lot of problems for Burns from start to finish.
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