Ricky Burns wants Broner or Crawford

By Boxing News - 05/29/2016 - Comments

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By Patrick McHugh: After beating Michele Di Rocco (40-2-1, 18 KOs) by an 8th round knockout last Saturday night to claim the vacant WBA light welterweight title that previously belonged to Adrien Broner, newly crowned WBA champion Ricky Burns (40-5-1, 14 KOs) says he’s eager to get a big fight against a big name.

The two names that Burns has interest in right now is WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford and Adrien “The Problem” Broner. For Burns to get either of those guys to fight him, he’ll likely need to travel to the U.S. because they might not want to face Burns in the UK.

The money for the fight would need to be worth it for Burns, 33, to take the risk of traveling to the U.S rather than staying in the UK and making simple defenses of his WBA title against the top 15 challengers.

Burns can probably hold onto his WBA title for a while if he doesn’t take on any big names because there are a lot of beatable contenders in the World Boxing Association’s top 15 rankings.

Burns stopped the 34-year-old Di Rocco in an impressive fashion in knocking him down twice to get an eighth round knockout at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. In winning the fight, Burns become the first fighter from Scotland to win a world title in three separate weight classes. It’s still too early to tell whether Burns has gotten better in the last year or if it’s a case of him simply facing a guy that didn’t deserve to be ranked at No.1 in 34-year-old Di Rocco.

Burns’ career took a hit with him losing to Terence Crawford, Dejan Zlaticanin and Omar Figueroa, and getting a controversial 12 round draw against Raymundo Beltran. In Burns’ last three fights, he’s beaten Di Rocco, Josh King and Prince Ofotsu. I don’t think anyone would argue that those three fighters are as good as the guys that Burns lost to. That’s why it’s still too early to say if Burns has improved. If he’s gotten better, then he should be able to beat Crawford, Zlaticanin, Beltran and Figueroa. If he hasn’t improved, then he’ll lose to those fighters again.

“There is some big fights and some big names out there for me,” said Burn to skysports.coms. “I have said to Eddie that I want to fight the top names. I do super-lightweight comfortably but lightweight is still an option. At super-lightweight, you have Terence Crawford, he is fighting Viktor Postol in a unification. I would fight him again if it came down to it. Why not? And there are other big fights out there.”

Ricky executed the game plan perfectly,” said trainer Tony Sims. “We watched tapes of the guy. We had a game plan of movement, straight shots down the center and keep boxing. Ricky could have done that for 25 rounds.”

It might be better for Burns to test himself slowly against some of the top contenders rather than go straight from fighting a guy like Di Rocco to the very best in the 140lb division. Burns and his promoter Eddie Hearn might believe that Di Rocco deserved to be ranked No.1 based on his resume, but a lot of boxing fans don’t. They point out that Di Rocco’s best win of his career before the Burns fight was against Alexandre Lepelley, a fighter that has lost five out of his last seven fights.

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That was probably the best opponent Di Rocco had ever fought before up until the time he fought Burns. With Burns having not really tested himself since his string of losses from 2013 to 2015, it would be prudent if he fought some of the contenders like Antonio Orozco, Omar Figueroa, Adrian Granados and Khabib Allakhverdiev before stepping it up to the level of Broner or Crawford.

If Broner fought those guys now, it would seem too much like he’s cashing out rather than taking on someone that he had a good chance of beating. We’re not seeing Crawford and Broner stepping it up against guys that would have an excellent chance of beating them like Keith Thurman, Errol Spence, Jermall Charlo, Gennady Golovkin or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

Crawford and Broner would likely know that they would have problems if they fought any of those guys, which is probably why they won’t fight them. Burns shouldn’t take risks unless he knows that he’s got an excellent chance of winning or at least being competitive. There’s just enough evidence to suggest that Burns could beat Broner or Crawford at this point because Burns hasn’t fought enough talented fighters recently. You can’t call Di Rocco, Josh King and Prince Ofotsu talented guys. They were decent opponents, but not in the league of Crawford, Broner or Viktor Postol.