Ricky Burns: I know what will happen to my career if I lose to Lepelley

By Boxing News - 10/04/2014 - Comments

burns8oBy Scott Gilfoid: The 31-year-old Ricky Burns (36-4-1, 11 KOs) says he has no plans of retiring from boxing in the near future, but at the same time he admits that his career will be in bad shape if he loses tonight against little known Alexandre Lepelley (17-1-1, 3 KOs) in their fight at the First Direct Arena, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.

Burns has lost his last two fights, and not looked good in a fight since his win over Kevin Mitchell in 2012. That’s two years ago, and he’s just been plain awful since then.

Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn found Lepelley for him to fight, and this should be a nice little safe fight for Burns, but we saw what happened to Burns in his last tune-up fight where he shockingly lost to Dejan Zlaticanin last June.

That was supposed to have been a soft touch for Burns, but he still lost. So Hearn has found an even softer touch in Lepelley for Burns to fight.

If Burns can’t beat him either, then that’s probably going to be it for Burns. Yeah, he can keep fighting on with his career, but it would be academic at that point that he’s just going to be a domestic level fighter at the level of someone like Derry Mathews and Anthony Crolla.

“There’s plenty of time to do that when you hang the gloves up but I have no intention of doing that any time soon,” Burns said to the Dailyrecord.co.uk, about him retiring and looking at his old title belts and trophies he’s won during his career. “I know what would happen to my career if I lost – it would put me in an impossible position – so I am not even going to think about that prospect. Eddie wanted to take me away from the pressure for one or two fights.”

Burns would still have a Scotland clash against 37-year-old Scott Harrison he could take to get a nice payday, but that might be the only one. Burns would need to make up his mind about taking the Harrison fight soon, because if he waits much longer, Harrison will likely lose more fights. The same goes for Burns.
He would need to strike while the iron is hot if he wants to take advantage of the money he could make in a Harrison fight. Look at Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew.

Both of them were knocked out, and have little prospects at cruiserweight. But they’re facing each other to get as much money as possible before their careers go downhill once they start facing quality opposition at cruiserweight instead of the fodder they’ve been fighting recently to pump up their records.

“Boxing is all I have wanted to do and that hasn’t changed but I know there will be some big decisions to make after this fight,” Burns said.

Junior middleweight Brian Rose (25-2-1, 7 KOs) will be fighting tonight against Ignacio Lucero Fraga (11-7-3, 5 KOs) in what should be an easy fight for Rose. Hearn has found him an especially soft opponent for him to get back onto the winning tract following his loss to Demetrius Andrade last June.

I’m not quite sure Hearn went so soft with this fight, but I guess he felt that Rose needed a real confidence booster because he found an especially easy mark for him.



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