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Burns retains world title
- Updated: October 7, 2016
Ricky Burns made the first successful defence of his WBA super-lightweight world title with a unanimous points victory over Kiryl Relikh in Glasgow.
The Scot, a three-weight world champion, took a while to get going after a promising start from the Belarusian challenger, but eventually claimed victory on all three of the judges’ scorecards after a punishing and fiery battle.
The former WBO super-featherweight and lightweight champion grew into the fight after being backed up early on and eventually won the fight via scores of 118-110 and 116-112 twice.
Relikh, 26 and trained by Ricky Hatton, took the fight to Burns and found his rhythm quickly as he moved in and out, landing big right hands on the home favourite and proved he belonged at world level.
The almost unknown and unbeaten challenger maintained a fast start, closing the ring down, throwing those hard right hands with great success, silenced the normally rampant Glasgow crowd.
Burns though, the more experienced of the pair, started to really get going in the third round and gave Relikh as good as he got as the pair went toe-to-toe, battling for the centre of the ring.
In the fifth, the Scot started …
