Ricky Burns to fight on August 1st

By Boxing News - 07/09/2015 - Comments

burns5By Scott Gilfoid: Former two division world champion Ricky Burns (37-5-1, 11 KOs) will be fighting next month on August 1st in a 10 round bout against an opponent still to be determined on the Luke Campbell vs. Tommy Coyle card at the Craven Park Stadium, Hull, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.

Burns, 32, will be moving back down to the lightweight division after facing Omar Figueroa Jr. last May in a fight at 140. Burns lost the fight by a 12 round decision, but he looked better than he had in years. Instead of staying at light welterweight, Burns will be moving back down to 135, where he says there are a lot of big fights for him at the domestic level.

“We’ve now decided to go back down to lightweight,” Burns said to skysports.com. “[I was] making light-welterweight far too easily. But hopefully we can get ourselves a couple of decent fights down at lightweight and get myself back into contention for a big fight again.”

Burns is interested in facing the likes of Terry Flanagan, Kevin Mitchell and Jorge Linares. You would have to figure that Anthony Crolla is also someone that Burns would like to fight if given the chance.

Burns figures that if he can get a couple of wins under his belt, he could then get a world title shot against one of the lightweight champions.

I don’t think Burns is going to have any success at lightweight. He seems to have grown into the 140lb division, and by draining back down to lightweight, he’s likely going to be as weak and listless at that weight as he was in his losses to Terence Crawford and Dejan Zlaticanin, as well as his controversial draw against Raymundo Beltran in 2013.

The only reason I think Burns looked good in his last fight against Figueroa was because he was fighting at 140 rather than 135. The problem with Burns staying at 140 is he doesn’t have the punching power to compete with guys like Crawford, Lucas Matthysse, Lamont Peterson, Viktor Postol and Ruslan Provodnikov, to name just a small handful of fighters.

Burns is a better fighter at 140, but he’s still not going to be good enough to ever win a world title in this weight class in my estimation. He just isn’t strong enough, talented enough, or young enough to beat the best at 140. But in going back down to 135, Burns is up the creek without a paddle. He doesn’t have a place in this fight class any longer, as he’s weak after he cuts weight to get down to the division, and there’s no way he’s going to be guys like Jorge Linares, Jose Zepeda, Darleys Perez, Richard Abril, Dennis and Shafikov.

Burns may or may not be able to beat Kevin Mitchell again, but that doesn’t really matter because he’s just a contender and no someone going anywhere in the division.

“With a couple of wins down there at lightweight it gets my name back there, amongst them all,” Burns said.

I think we’re going to see Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn putting him in with weak opposition for the next couple of fights until he can get a world title fight against someone like Perez or Linares. At that point, you can expect to see Burns get beaten again and shown the door to the lightweight division. He’ll then move up to light welterweight again and try and make something happen in that weight class.

The thing is Burns will have wasted a year or more trying to get something happening at lightweight, and it’s just not going to happen in my view. The talent just isn’t there, and the weight is wrong for the hulking Burns.

There aren’t any easy marks for Burns to win world titles at lightweight like there was when he picked up belts at super featherweight and lightweight in the past. The fighters are too good now, and Burns has gotten older and can’t melt down in weight like he did before. The guy needs to be fighting at 140, because he’s going to be weak as heck at lightweight.



Comments are closed.