By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn thinks that unbeaten challenger Terence Crawford (22-0, 16 KO’s) is in for a big surprise this Saturday night in their important match in Glasgow. Hearn thinks Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) will beat the undefeated American Crawford and expose him. How Burns will go about doing that is the big question because he’s considerably slower than Crawford, and honestly, Burns looks like he’s on his last leg as this point.
“Crawford is a real golden boy in America and is backed by Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions and HBO,” Hearn said to Sky Sports. “I honestly don’t think he knows what he’s in for on Saturday night…I don’t think what 10,000 people, especially Scottish people, are going to sound like…I think it’s a huge advantage for Ricky. It makes a huge, huge difference. We will see how special he is when he hears it.”
What does Hearn think this is an introductory speech class for Crawford? He’s not going to care one bit if there are 10,000 Scottish fans screaming their heads off for Burns and singing nonstop football songs. Crawford is going to go out and systematically take Burns apart piece by piece on Saturday night.
The fans won’t have anything to do other than watch and take absorb with their eyes the punishment that Burns will be taking in this fight. I just hope this isn’t like one of those NFL games where the crowd clears out completely by halftime when the home team gets royally blown out by the visiting team. I can just see the 10,000 disappearing by the 6th or 7th rounds to where there’s just a few diehard Burns fans chattering away despite things looking bleak.
This looks like the end of the line for the Scottish fighter, and I can’t see anything good coming from this fight other than a last good payday for Burns.
The only way the 10,000 fans can have an impact on this fight is if the three judges score rounds for Burns based on the crowd noise. I mean, if the crowd is going mad for Burns each time he misses with one of his shots, the three judges could be influenced from that if they’re not engaged mentally to what they’re actually seeing in the ring. I don’t know how they’ll be able to ignore Crawford dominating Burns and likely clowning him the entire time.
If the judges are that mentally susceptible to crowd noise then they shouldn’t be scoring fights. I think it’ll look incredibly bad for Burns and Hearn if the three judges score the fight like they did Burns’ last fight against Raymundo Beltran. Having two controversial decisions back to back would make Burns look bad. There can’t be routine controversy each time Burns fights because that would put a lot of fans off.
Crawford has the kind of power where he can take the judges out of this fight and turn them into spectators by knocking Burns out.
The Burns-Crawford will be staged at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Comments are closed.