Coatbridge boxer Ricky Burns retained his WBO super featherweight title after an impressive first defence against Norway’s Andreas Evensen.
Fighting at the Braehead Arena in Glasgow, Scotland’s WBO super featherweight champion (30-2, 7KOs) retained his title with a unanimous twelve round decision in a tougher than expected challenge from Evensen (13-2, 5KOs).
The scores were 119-108, 119-108 and 118-109. Although the Scottish fighter failed to stop the tough Norse opponent he out punched the challenger by at least two to one.
Evensen, a Norse of Colombian heritage, was thought to be a straightforward challenge for the champion in his initial home defence of the belt. Being a natural featherweight he was also considerably smaller than Burns who, with the first punch of the night, landed a telling right hand to the temple dropping Evensen in the opening seconds of the first.
However the Norse boxer recovered and suddenly found a rhythm and started to fight back with vengeance. He was eating many punches though as he constantly tried to pressure Burns and applied a busy-punching approach using smart footwork to circle around the champion.
As the fight progressed Burns connected with the more powerful punches while Evensong relied on quantity over quality and landed some decent blows himself.
Burns worked off Evensen’s body very well down the stretch but a determined challenger continued to use his legs all the time.
There may have been signs of a slight disappointment among the home fans that Burns didn’t stop his opponent but they will have gone home happy that Scotland’s newest boxing hero has his first defence ticked safely under his belt.
