By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) will be defending his title for the fifth and likely the last time when he faces #1 WBO Terence Crawford (22-0, 16 KO’s) on March 1st at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. This is absolutely not the fight that Burns or his promoter Eddie Hearn wanted to take. They were hoping that Burns could fight a rematch against Raymundo Beltran, who Burns was given a 12 round draw against last September in Glasgow.
The World Boxing Organization had other ideas, and instead ordered Burns to take the arguably much tougher fight against the unbeaten lightning fast defensive artist Crawford. What this means of course is that unless we get some wild scoring of the fight like in Burns’ last fight in Glasgow, Burns is going to end up losing this fight to Crawford. We’re talking two different levels of talent here, with Crawford being far above Burns in every way you can imagine in terms of talent. Crawford is faster, more powerful, harder to hit and just a much better fighter than Burns could ever dream of being.
“I have a point to prove,” Burns said to Sky Sports. “We’ve made a few changes and some adjustments; we’re going to be doing thins differently and fingers crossed that we see a new Ricky Burns on March 1. Everybody is writing me off again with Terence but that doesn’t bother me. I like being the underdog, and I can’t wait to get back out there again in front of another great Glasgow crowd.”
What is Burns complaining about? I don’t know of anyone writing him off before his fight against Beltran. Heck, I figured Burns would win that fight, and that’s why I was so surprised when Beltran came out strong and whipped Burns from the 2nd round until the final 12th round. I didn’t know that Beltran would arguably win 11 of the 12 rounds and knock Burns down in the 8th and break his jaw. I mean, I did have a feeling that Beltran would get royally jobbed if it went to the cards; that I did believe would happen. I sure as heck don’t remember everyone writing Burns off before the Beltran fight.
The way I see, Burns needs to start thinking ahead of the Crawford fight towards a doomsday scenario with him coming off of an embarrassing knockout loss, because he’s not going to beat Crawford. I’m sure that Crawford’s objective for this fight will be to knock Burns out cold in order to make sure that he doesn’t wind up like Beltran where he totally dominates Burns and then goes home the loser after the judges give Burns the win. Crawford won’t want that happening, so you can expect him to stop Burns and put him out of his misery as the WBO champ. Burns has been really laboring as the WBO champion for a while now since the Jose Gonzalez fight, and he’s ready to be taken down and put into the lower ranks where he’ll have to scratch and claw for title shots like all the other contenders.
As far as Burns changing his fighting style for this bout, I don’t see that happening. What is Burns going do, use less arm bars and hold less? If he does that, Crawford will knock him quicker. Burns was holding Beltran all fight long last September, and I couldn’t believe the referee didn’t take points off from him for all the god awful clinching and wrestling Burns was doing. If Burns holds less, he gets destroyed. I don’t see Burns having any luck beating Crawford by running, because you don’t win points by running. Of course, we saw Burns and holding in his last fight against Beltran and he was given a draw, so I guess it’s possible Burns could run for 12 rounds and be given a decision. But I still see Crawford knocking Burns out cold in order to turn the judges into useless spectators in this fight.
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