Burns vs. Mitchell: A pick em fight

By Boxing News - 07/19/2012 - Comments

Image: Burns vs. Mitchell: A pick em fightBy Scott Gilfoid: The September 22nd fight between WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (34-2, 9 KO’s) and Kevin Mitchell (33-1, 24 KO’s) is one of those bouts where it’s really impossible to pick a winner with any degree of accuracy because both guys come into the fight with so many god awful flaws in their game. It’s a fight where you can close your eyes and throw a dart at the board and probably come up with the winner a lot better than trying to analyse who the better fighter if of the two.

Burns is taking on the 27-year-old Mitchell, who hasn’t exactly been the most active of fighters n the last couple of years. Indeed, Mitchell has only fought twice in the past two years, and probably has no business being ranked in the top five in the lightweight division with that kind of inactivity, and yet the World Boxing Organization somehow has seen fit to rank Mitchell #1 in the division. That’s pretty laughable especially when you look at the rankings and note that Mitchell is ranked above Yuriorkis Gamboa at #3, #5 Sergio Thompson and #8 Hank Lundy.

That’s a pretty messed up ranking if you ask me. It’s like an upside down ranking where the talent is on the bottom and lesser talent is at the top, just begging to be exposed again. Mitchell was already exposed by Michael Katsidis two years ago in a 3rd round TKo defeat. I still can’t forget how Michell turned his back to Katsidis in the third when he started giving it to him on the ropes. I’ve never seen anything like that before and since.

Burns has no power, and the only thing I can see about him is that he balloons up in weight after he rehydrates. In his fight against Paulus Moses and Katsidis recently, Burns looked like a welterweight in their with smaller lightweights. But even with the size advantage working for him, Burns did an awful lot of clinching to the point where I thought he should have been disqualified. It’s terrible to watch the guy fight because of all the grabbing and arm bars he puts on his opponents.



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