Anthony Crolla vs. Ricky Burns – Results

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: Former WBA World lightweight champion Anthony Crolla (32-6-3, 13 KOs) pounded out a 12 round unanimous decision over former 3 division world champ Ricky Burns(41-7-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday night in a crossroads fight for the two of them at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.

The judges scored the fight for the hometown guy Crolla by the scores 116-113, 117-112, 116-114. Boxing News 24 scored the fight a draw. Crolla didn’t do enough to rate the win. There were at least 8 rounds that could have gone either way Crolla won 2 rounds clearly and Burns won 2 rounds in a decisive manner. The other 8 rounds were ones that were too close to decide. I had most of the rounds even.

Crolla, 30, was the busier fighter of the two, but Burns landed the cleaner, more accurate shots in the fight. Crolla was missing with a lot of his punches, and throwing shots just for the sake of throwing them. I couldn’t give Crolla a lot of the rounds based on his work rate alone because he wasn’t landing clean enough punches for me to give him the win.

The win for Crolla keeps alive hopes of a third fight against Jorge Linares, who recently beat Crolla in consecutive fights. It would be good to see Crolla fight another one of the lightweight world champions rather than Linares, because he really has his number. If Crolla fights Linare a third time, you would have to assume it’s just for the payday and not for the hope of beating him. Crolla doesn’t have the right style to beat Linares.

In the co-feature, Mohamed Mimoune (19-2, 2 KOs) pulled off a major upset in defeating European Boxing Union welterweight champion Sam Eggington (24-4, 13 KOs) b a 12-round split decision. The judges’ scores were 116-112, 115-113 for the 30-year-old Mimoune, and 116-112 for Eggington. Boxing News 24 scored the Mimoune-Eggington fight 116-112 for Mimoune.

Eggington was getting caught quite frequently when he was coming forward leading with his head. It was too easy for Mimoune to catch the 23-year-old Eggingotn with nice shots because he was plodding forward trying to land big shots without putting too much emphasis on his defense. This is the same problem that Eggington had in his loss to Bradley Skeete last year in losing a 12 round unanimous decision on March 5, 2016. Eggington was lowering his head and plodding forward without worrying about his defense.

The loss for Eggington comes at a bad tie in his boxing career, as HBO is said to have been interested in having Eggington sign with them for a fight. It’s unclear wha fight that was supposed to have been. It’s not likely that HBO will bother trying to get Eggingon now.

Other boxing results on tonight’s Crolla vs. Burns card:

Undefeated welterweight Conor Benn (9-0, 7 KOs) destroyed Nathan Clarke (5-2-1, 1 KO) by a 1st round knockout for his 7th KO of his career.

Gavin McDonnell (18-1-2, 5 KOs) TKO 1 Jozsef Ajtai

Hosea Burton (20-1, 10 KOs) TKO 1 Ratu Latianara

Lewis Ritson (13-0, 7 KOs) TKO 7 Robbie Barrett