Crawford dominates Burns; Joshua stops Avila

By Boxing News - 03/01/2014 - Comments

crawford655By Scott Gilfoid: In masterclass performance, unbeaten #1 WBO Terence Crawford (23-0, 16 KO’s) easily beat WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-3-1, 11 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. The final judges scores were 115-112, 115-112, 117-111.

Crawford got better and better as the fight went on. In the 4th and 5th rounds, Crawford flurried on Burns in seemingly hurting him. In both cases, Burns would retreat to the ropes and just cover up like a sparring partner.

From rounds 9 through 12, Burns held constantly making it difficult for Crawford to get his shots off. Still, Burns was too slow unable to land his shots in between his clinches. I thought the referee should have taken points off from Burns for his holding.

After the fight Crawford said he was okay with giving Burns a rematch if he wants it, although I don’t know why he would after the way that Crawford dominated him.

As bad as Burns looked tonight, I think he needs to drop back and face some bottom 10 type opposition to get his confidence back. It would be a mistake to put Burns in with a good opponent like Raymundo Beltran off of this loss, and definitely it wouldn’t be a good idea for Burns to fight Crawford again. We saw tonight that Burns doesn’t have the talent to beat Crawford.

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In a horrible mismatch, 6’5″ heavyweight Anthony Joshua (5-0, 5 KO’s) scored an easy 1st round knockout over 38-year-old journeyman Hector Alfredo Avila (22-16-1, 14 KO’s). Avila went from a left hook to the head in the 1st round. It didn’t look like much of a punch at all.

It was like one of Joshua’s typical arm punches that he tends to throw, but Avila collapsed on the canvas anyway. Avila got up slowly holding his right ear. The referee Victor Loughlin then halted the fight at 2:14 of the round rather than giving the chubby looking Avila a chance to continue fighting.

Overall, I wasn’t all that impressed with Joshua. He still looks robotic and slow with way too much muscle on his frame for his own good. Avila looked like he didn’t want to be there tonight, so I’m not surprised at all that he went down with that weak-looking left hook. The way that Avila looked tonight, I think Joshua could have knocked him down by blowing his air on him. I’m not saying Avila took a dive, but I am saying that the punch that knocked him out reminded me of the phantom punch that Cassius Clay used to knockout Sonny Liston. I’m just wondering what’s going to happen to Joshua when he finally faces someone that actually is inspired to come out and beat him. I can see Joshua ending up getting dominated and stopped the same way that the heavily muscled Frank Bruno was when he faced his first quality opponent in Mike Tyson.

Other boxing action on the card:

John Murray TKO 2 John Simpson
Scott Cardle TKO 8 Paul Appleby
Anthony Ogogo pts 6 Greg O’Neill



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