Burns vs. Indongo: Ricky not worried about Julius’s power date April 11th, 2017 – 2 Comments

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: IBO/WBA World light welterweight champion Ricky Burns (41-5-1, 14 KOs) is not concerned with the punching power of his opponent IBF champion Julius Indongo (21-0, 15 KOs) in their unification fight for this Saturday night at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. Indongo, 34, has some boxing fans thinking he’s a big puncher after his 1st round knockout victory over former IBF 140lb champion Eduard Troyanovsky last December.

Indongo knocked Troyanovsky out with a single left hand to the head in the opening round. Burns thinks Indongo just caught him the Russian Troyanovsky cold with the knockout shot.

Burns likes to hold a lot when he faces punchers. I’m hoping he doesn’t start clinching Indongo like mad on Saturday. The fight would be painfully ugly to watch if Burns starts holding like he did in his fights against Raymundo Beltran and Michael Katsidis.

Burns, 33, will have his home crowd in his favor on Saturday night. The cheering boxing fans seemed to give Burns energy in his last fight against Kiryl Relikh last October. That was a fight in which Burns fought well in the first 7 rounds. However, after trainer Ricky Hatton gave Relikh a pep talk in round 8, the fight turned around completely with the Belarusian fighter dominating the last 5 rounds.

Burns was running all around the ring, looking flustered and old. It was fortunate for Burns that he’d done enough in the first half of the contest for him to get the victory. Boxing News 24 had the fight scored a draw. Burns really caved in the last 5 rounds. Relikh appeared to win 1 round in the first 7 rounds, and that’s all he needed to get at least a draw.

“I don’t think he is going to be as big or as devastating a puncher as people think,” said Burns to Sky Sports News HQ about Indongo’s power. “We’ve looked at his last fight; his first fight out of Namibia and knocked out the guy but it was 30 or 40 seconds and he obviously caught the champion cold and that could’ve happened to anyone,” said Burns about Indongo.

Burns might be right about Indongo catching Troyanovsky cold in the 1st round in their fight last December. In Troyanovsky’s previous fight, he was shaken up by a shot from non-puncher Keita Obara, and he looked very vulnerable. Indongo is clearly a better puncher than Obara. He caught Troyanovsky with a good left hand shot to the head. Troyanovsky should have been able to take the punch, but he couldn’t. His punch resistance was not there for some reason. Maybe it’s age starting to show up with Troyanovsky, but it sure didn’t look like a great punch.

Burns is definitely not the fighter that he once was back in 2012. He’s clearly gone downhill since 2013 after taking a lot of punishment in fights against Raymundo Beltran, Terence Crawford and Dejan Zlaticanin. That was a 3-fight stretch in which Burns was being matched against good fighters after having it pretty easy in terms of match-making in the first 12 years of his career.

Burns was exposed more or less by Beltran, Crawford and Zlaticanin. Burns was beaten by Omar Figuera Jr. in 2015. After that, Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn started to work wonders with his career by putting him in with arguably less talented fighters like Josh King, Prince Ofotsu, Michele Di Rocco and Relikh. The careful match-making has worked for Burns, as he looks as good as new, just like he did in the first 12 years of his career when he was fighting a lot of beatable opposition.

Personally, I don’t think Burns is the fighter that he once was 5 years ago. But even if he was the same fighter, I rate him well below the likes of Terence Crawford and Adrien Broner. I think those are the 2 best fighters at 140 right now. Relikh could be a very good fighter if he could be taught to fight in the same relentless manner that we saw from him in the last 5 rounds against Burns. I don’t know that Relikh can be transformed into that kind of fighter. If he could, he would be really hard to deal with for anyone in the division apart from Crawford.

The southpaw Indongo could make it interesting if he lands his left hand on the button of Burns. He’s got enough power to hurt Burns if he lands his left hand in the right place. Indongo has been knocking guys out quickly as of late in scoring back to back 1st round knockouts over Troyanovsky and Fabian Lymo.

It’s possible that Indongo’s punching power has improved overnight since 2016. I don’t think that’s the case, I think Indongo is still the same gangly fighter that was forced to go the full 12 round distance against Zolani Marali, Ibrahim Class and Kaizer Mabuza. Indongo won all three of those fights, but he did not look impressive. Indongo looked weak and was easy to hit. He also looked uncoordinated at times in each of those fights. His long reach and decent left hand power was the telling factor in those fights. Indongo represented Nambia in the 2008 Olympics. He was beaten soundly in his first fight in that Olympics in losing to Anthony Little of Australia by a 14-4 score. It was a mismatch.

If Burns can handle the occasional left hand blasts from Indongo, he should be able to out-box him on Saturday night without too many problems. Burns is NOT going to be able to knockout Indongo though, because he’s got a good chin. Burns can’t punch. That means it’s going to be a long 12 round fight for Burns. He’s got to have to take his fair share of Indongo’s power shots to get through this fight.

If Indongo was a body puncher, I’d be worried for Burns, because he would not be able to get out of way of those punches. But Burns is still pretty good at moving his head and upper body to avoid power shots. To hit Burns to the head on a consistent basis, you have to really pressure him the way that Relikh was doing in the last 5 rounds of their fight in 2016. Indongo isn’t a pressure fighter. He’s more like a pot shot type of guy that bombs his opponents from the outside with single shots.

This is going to be a rare fight for the 5’10” Burns where he’s going to be the shorter guy with the shorter reach. The 5’10 ½” Indongo is slightly taller than Burns, and he has a 1-inch reach advantage. This should be interesting to see Burns reacts to suddenly being in the ring with someone taller than him and with a longer reach. We saw how the 6’6” heavyweight Wladimir Klitschko fell apart in being in the ring with the taller Tyson Fury in their fight in 2015. Before that fight, Wladimir had mostly been the taller guy in the majority of his fights. But when he got in with Fury, he was not comfortable with the height and reach at all. We saw how Wladimir reacted by electing to hold all night long rather than letting his hands go. Burns already does a lot of clinching in his fights as it is. Will he elect to clinch even more against Indongo on Saturday night? Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s exactly what Burns does. I just hope there’s a good referee working the fight so he can control Burns’ holding, because it could get really ugly in there.