Former two division world champion Ricky Burns (40-5-1, 14 KOs) successfully resurrected his career tonight with his 8th round knockout win over the highly rated No.1 WBA Michele Di Rocco (40-2-1, 18 KOs) to claim the vacant World Boxing Association light welterweight title at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.
The stoppage for the 33-year-old Burns makes him a thee division world champion. Burns flattened Di Rocco with some nice shots in the 8th. When Di Rocco got back to his feet, his equilibrium appeared to be off, which led to referee Terry O’Connor stopping the fight.
Burns knocked Di Rocco down in the 3rd round with some hard shots. There looked like there was a push involved by Burns to get Di Rocco all the way down. It didn’t matter. He was just taking punishment anyway and it was clear that he was too over-matched to win the fight. The knockdown would have been an issue if the fight were competitive but this was not a closely contested match tonight.
It was academic that Burns would be the winner in this fight the moment it was made because Di Rocco was someone that appeared to be ranked way too high by the WBA given his meager credentials as a pro. Only the WBA knows why they ranked Di Rocco number one with their organization, but it didn’t make much sense when looking at what he had accomplished during his career coming into the fight.
Burns landed big right hands near the end of the 5th and 6th rounds. Those were close rounds with not much action. The right hands from Burns made the difference in those rounds.
In the 7th, both fighter spent a good portion of the round wrestling on the inside with Burns leaning forward with his head. Surprisingly, there weren’t any cuts suffered in the round because there were some clashing of heads going on.
Burns says he’d like to fight Adrien Broner. That fight could be a possibility if Broner doesn’t face WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia. It’ll depend on what other options Broner’s manager Al Haymon has for him.
