By Michael Collins: A hulking WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (34-2, 9 KO’s) was able to easily defeat challenger Paulus Moses (28-2, 19 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Braehead Arena, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. The final judges’ scores were 119-110, 120-110 and 117-111, all for Burns.
What was really striking about the fight was how huge the 5’10” Burns looked. He appeared to be well over 140, perhaps even as high as 150+. He’s huge for a lightweight, both in height and weight. It was like a rehydrated Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. dominating a lighter fighter. Burns’ size advantage probably clinched the win well before the 12th round. None of Moses’ big power shots had any effect on the bigger Burns and it just looked like a fighter from the junior middleweight division fighting a slender lightweight.
As far as the action goes, it wasn’t too thrilling of a fight to watch. Burns dominated with his higher work rate, and it wasn’t even that fight. Moses just wasn’t throwing enough punches, and the shots he did throw were mostly picked off on the glove of Burns. When Moses did land an occasional big shot, Burns took it as if it were nothing. He was so solid and big, the shots wouldn’t even budge his head. He was like granite.
The first round was kind of close because Burns didn’t throw much, and neither did Moses. The remaining 11 rounds, were ridiculously one-sided leaving one with the impression that the 33-year-old Moses, #4 WBO, was ranked way too high by the World Boxing Organization because he looked something awful. He was improvement over the fodder that had been put in with Burns when he was the WBO super featherweight champion, but that’s saying nothing because he was in with nothing but weak guys. Moses looked terrible throughout.
There’s not much to say about the fight other than round two through twelve were carbon copies of other with Burns throwing jabs, chopping right hands and left hooks to the body but without much power or hand speed. Moses threw little and wasn’t able to make contact even when he did throw shots. Occasionally, Burns would throw some juicy rabbit punches, but other than that he mostly kept it clean. The BoxNation commentator were working up a lather about how good Burns looked, even going so far as seeing him as a future superstar. I don’t know what in the world they were talking about because Burns looked the farthest thing from superstar from that performance. If you call grabbing someone in a clinch each time he gets close a superstar performance, then yeah, Burns was the best superstar I’ve ever seen, but I think he just looked like a mediocre champion of huge physical size beating a weak opponent. I’d like to see how Burns would do against someone who is actually good like Robert Guerrero or Adrien Broner. I realize Broner is a super featherweight, but there’s only five pounds that separate the two weight classes. I see Guerrero easily beating Burns, as I do with Broner as well. The only way I could see either of them losing to Burns is if his weight caused them problems.
Overall, I wasn’t impressed with Burns in the slightest. He’s slow, weak, and not light on his feet. I’ve seen so many better fighters than him recently and I wonder how long he can hold onto a belt before the WBO finally ranks someone who is good enough to beat him.
Burns will now probably fight lightweight contender Kevin Mitchell this summer. I can see Mitchell giving Burns a lot of problems with his speed, power and movement.
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In other fights on the undercard:
Paul Appleby UD 10 Stephen Ormond
Stephen Simmons TKO 6 Hastings Rasani
Callum Johnson TKO 1 Tommy Tolan