By Peter Wells: Firstly i’d like to congratulate Ricky Burns on a sensational performance last night in front of a great supportive crowd. Burns can now hold his head high being 1 of 3 Great British world champions. It was very hard to see a way to give this fight to Ricky before hand, but after that performance it’s hard to understand why we doubted him. Like so many fighters, when they move up in class it brings the best out of them, and that happened again last night.

Roman Martinez now 24-1-1 was the big favourite and had a dream start with a first round knockdown. It was a good straight right which caught Burns on the chin and sent him down. It was though nothing more than a flash knockdown. Burns started well again in the 2nd but like the first stood a little to close and the power of Martinez was showing as he sent Ricky back to the ropes. In the third it was Ricky’s turn to start pulling the trigger and was landing very accurate and hard punches, an uppercut by the ropes was probably the best shot of the bunch, but Rocky didn’t let Burns off the hook as he came back with his own solid shots but Burns did enough early on to win the round.

It was after that that the fight got interesting both fighters where landing hard shots but it was Burns who was doing all the work throughout the next 2 rounds. Then in the 5th Burns had Martinez on shaky legs from a big overhand right and the champion was glad to hear the bell. In round 7 though Burns was again badly shaken and despite his good start he was hit with to many flush shots to win the round.

In the 9th he seemed to be landing well and once again had Martinez in a bit of trouble, Martinez fought back well and just took the round on my card. The 10th was very similar but this time i scored it a draw. Burns started to get out the way more in the 11th but instead of holding on he was happy to stay close to Martinez and still trade big shots.

Burns nearly got a fantastic end as he had Martinez in serious trouble at the start but couldn’t finish the Puerto Rican. I had it 116-112 to Burns while the judges scored it 115-112(twice) and 115-113.

Burns was very happy with the victory after the fight saying, “It was a clean shot, I’ll give him that – throughout the fight he did catch us a few times – but as I said before I do have a good chin and I took them well,” Burns told Sky Sports. “I had to grit my teeth every round there and I’m just overwhelmed. “I couldn’t ask for a better camp behind me, the build up to this fight all I could think about was winning this world title, and now it’s here I don’t know what to say.”

Frank Warren also told Sky that he wants to get Ricky back in the ring in December. His opponent probably won’t be a top 5 or 10 fighter but there are still some decent names they could look at. The big fights will come if he can hand on to his title, Malcolm Klassen and Jorge Solis are two of the top dogs who would be great future opponents. Also if both fighters stay keep on winning there could be an all British match up with Gary Sykes in the future for sure.