By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) has had a nice little 3-fight reign at the World Boxing Organization 135 lb. champion after having the title given to him outside of the ring by the WBO back in 2011, but tonight that reign is going to end with Burns taking a terrible beating in front of his loving Scottish fans in the bitter cold of Glasgow.

Burns faces Raymundo Beltran (28-6, 17 KO’s) at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow, in Scotland, United Kingdom.

It’s surprising that Burns has held onto the WBO title this long, as he’s looked like the weak link among the lightweight champions from the jump, but soft matchmaking definitely helped him keep the title for 2 years.

Instead of facing the likes of Adrien Broner, Terence Crawford and Omar Figueroa in the past 2 years, Burns has feasted on guys like Kevin Mitchell, past his best Paulus Moses and totally inexperienced Jose Gonzalez.

Believe me, facing Mitchell, Moses and Gonzalez was a heck a lot of easier for Burns than taking on the murderer’s row of Broner, Crawford and Figueroa. So where does Beltran figure into this bunch. I see Beltran as being below Broner, Crawford and Figueroa in talent, but still good enough to beat the likes of Burns by a decision, provided we don’t see any odd scoring of the fight tonight.

I really hope the judges have their glasses on when they watch this fight, because it would be a real pity if they give the wrong guy the decision.

Beltran is the more talented and much more experienced fighter compared to Burns. With Burns, he’s really only faced one good fighter in his career in beating the weight drained Roman Martinez in 2010. Burns has a win over Michael Katsidis, but that came at the tail end of Katsidis’ career, and I had him winning that fight by a lopsided decision due to Burns just covering up for 12 rounds.

I’ve never seen a fight before, until this one, where one fighter just takes a beating against the ropes for 12 rounds, and then ends up getting the decision. That’s what happened with Burns in the Katsidis fight. It was such an ugly decision. I really felt sorry for Katsidis because he should have been given the win by a lopsided score, but instead he got the royal shaft.

Okay, so you can expect Burns to mostly cover up, hold and run tonight. If the judges give Burns rounds for doing this, as they did in the Katsidis fight, then I suppose we’ll see Burns getting a controversial victory. But Beltran is so talented that he’s going to give Burns a real hiding tonight, and put the judges in a situation where there’s no question who the better man is.

Burns was well on his way to getting stomped in his last fight against Jose Gonzalez, but he lucked out when Gonzalez made the stupid mistake of running out of gas in the 7th after having staggered Burns. Beltran won’t make that same mistake, believe me. Once he has Burns hurt, he will continue to pound him until the referee has no other choice but to step in to save him from getting dropped.