By Scott Gilfoid: After two utterly disappointing defeats in 2014, former two division world champion Ricky Burns (37-4-1, 11 KOs) will be hoping to regain his past glory in 2015.
Burns is still tinkering with his fighting style to figure out what he’s doing wrong in his fights that has caused him to lose to the likes of Terence Crawford and Dejan Zlaticanin in 2014.
The 31-year-old Burns and his trainer have been trying to understand what he’s doing wrong so that they can fix the problem. They see it as a fixable thing with his style rather than it being age related or due to ring wear.
“When I’m sparring, when I’m training, everything seems to be going fine,” Burns said via Skysports.com. “It’s just when I step in that ring, something is missing so hopefully I’ll get it back.”
Burns is moving back down to the lightweight division for his next fight, which he says will be announced in the next couple of weeks. Burns says it’s going to be a big announcement, and that has some boxing fans wondering if Burns will be getting a world title shot.
With two defeats out of Burns’ last three fights and with him no longer being ranked in the top 15, it would seem very strange if Burns gets a crack at one of the world titles.
It wouldn’t be surprising to me though, because I’ve seen a lot of weird things in the sport in the last few years. It would be disturbing though because it would be like letting an NFL team go to the Super Bowl after having lost all their games in the 2014 season. If we saw something like that in the NFL, fans would be hopping mad and the sport would lose a ton of credibility. In boxing though, you see weird things all too often and it just makes you shake your head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiA6vIw-ugc
“I’ll have a fight announced soon – it’s a big fight – so hopefully my name will be in the mix again too,” Burns said.
Burns ended his two-fight losing streak last October with an 8 round points decision win over Alexandre Lepelley in Leeds. Burns knocked Lepelley down in the 1st round. It was obviously nice for Burns to end his losing streak, but he still looked far from sharp.
Burns is reportedly training with Kevin Mitchell, one of his old opponents. Mitchell recently turned his career around with a 12 round decision win over Daniel Estrada. That win has some people in the boxing world thinking that Mitchell has rejuvenated himself and gotten younger. But the likely reality is that Mitchell looked good because he was matched against a limited fighter.
Burns stopped Mitchell in the 4th round in their fight in 2012.
For Burns to turn his career around he’s going to need to show that he can beat the likes of Richard Abril, Jorge Linares, and Raymundo Beltran. Burns fought Beltran in 2013 and was given a gift decision in the eyes of some fans.