By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) and his trainer Billy Nelson revealed their fight strategy this week in how they plan on trying to beat the talented #1 WBO challenger Terrence Crawford (22-0, 16 on March 1st at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. So what is Burns’ brilliant fight strategy for beating the lightning fast counter-punching Crawford?
Well, Nelson says they’re going to throw a lot of punches to try and keep Crawford off of his game. In other words, they’re going to try sand overwhelm Crawford the same way that fighters have been attemtpting to do for years against Floyd Mayweather Jr. without success. Crawford is very similar to Mayweather with his fighting style, so the idea is to overload his ability to counter punch for all the shots that coming in. The theory is that a counter puncher can only throw one punch at a time, while a busy fighter will just unload with combinations.
“We’re going to be very busy, take him out of his comfort zone,” Nelson said on Sky Ringside.
This kind of thing might work against a guy with average power, and less than blazing fast hands. But against a guy with the kind of power and hand speed that Crawford has going for him, it’s a recipe for disaster for Burns if he tries to just go in there and throw a lot of shots hoping to overwhelm Crawford’s defenses. Burns will end up getting hit with a shot that he doesn’t see coming, and he’ll either get dropped or we could see his jaw get broken again like in his last fight against Raymundo Beltran last September in that controversial fight in Scotland.
Burns says “It’s going to be a very difficult fight for me. Nobody knows more than me. Technically, he’s very, very slick and very good…He can punch a bit as well. My preparation has been going well and the variety of sparring that we’ve been bringing in has been great from southpaws to orthodox fighters because he does like to switch hit a lot.”
The only thing that can beat a fighter like Crawford is to get inside on him and stay there. But Burns can’t do this because he basically has no inside game, to be honest. When Burns is inside, he’s spoiling and just holing on to keep his opponents from throwing shots rather than throwing his own punches. If Burns knew how to fight on the inside, I would recommend that he smother Crawford and work his body all night and not let him get away, but Burns can’t learn how to fight on the inside overnight. Besides that, Nelson is talking about Burns simply trying to outwork him, and he didn’t say anything about fighting on the inside. Burns will be on the outside catching pure hell from Crawford each time he tries to throw one of his shots. It’s going to give Crawford all kinds of opportunities to land his counter shots, and really work Burns over.
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