This is a watershed moment for Burns’ career, as he looked something awful in his last fight against Kiryl Relikh in squeaking by with a very unimpressive 12 round unanimous decision on October 7 last year at the same SSE Hydo venue that he’ll be fighting in tonight. The fight took place in front of Burns’ own boxing fans in Glasgow. I had the Burns-Relikh fight scored a draw, as I counted 6 rounds that Relikh got the better of Burns. When you win 6 rounds, you’re supposed to be getting a draw in the fight unless there’s a knockdown.
In this case, Burns never knocked Relikh down or even came close to knocking him down. The judges scored the Burns-Relikh fight 116-112, 118-110 and 116-112. I thought the scoring was out of this world bad. I kind of felt sorry for Relkh, because he was pretty much in the same situation as Ray Beltran when he came into Glasgow and totally dominated Burns, only to leave the place with a 12 round draw. I only gave Burns 2 rounds in that fight, and yet he was given a draw.
Heck, the only reason why Kiryl lost the fight was beaten he didn’t start fighting hard until the 7th round. Kiryl’s trainer Ricky Hatton should have put some head under his backside from round 2 and pushed him to wake up and start fighting. I don’t think Kiryl realized how much better he was then Burns until he was almost hopelessly behind in the fight.