Don’t let fans hold sway
RICKY BURNS hopes to harness the Hydro fan power – but rival Julius Indongo’s camp admit they fear their man might be hit by a hometown decision.
Scotland’s WBA super-lightweight king will have the backing of more than 8000 supporters for tonight’s unification showdown with the IBO and IBF champion. Indongo’s
trainer and promoter Nestor Tobias is still bitter about his last trip to Glasgow – when fellow Namibian Paulus Moses lost to Burns in an unanimous decision at Braehead in 2012.
Tobias said: “I remember everything about that Moses fight. It was very close and I think he should have won but the scorecards were very wide so I wasn’t happy.
“Now after this fight we don’t want to be talking about the officials, just the excellence of the boxers.
“We want a fair fight and that the judges are neutral. There are two officials from the UK so it’s already an imbalance. But in their minds they should be neutral.
“No judge should be affected by the crowd. In football you don’t see England playing Brazil and there is a Brazilian referee but in boxing you have that and you can only hope they are going to judge the fight in the ring.
“We would like to believe that the judges will be fair as it’s such a big fight.
“We have seen some very dodgy and questionable decisions in big fights and we pray we don’t become victims of such.
“It’s a wrong notion to expect the visiting boxer to win by knockout only and we will do the best we can to convince the judges that Indongo walks away with three world title belts.
“The world will be watching and we will accept nothing less than fair play.”
Tobias warns Indongo is determined to silence the Hydro after smashingformer champ Eduard Troyanovsky in 40 seconds with a killer left hook.
The promoter said: “Julius has a 21-0 record and people are going to know who he is after the fight.
“They were talking about it being a lucky punch but you are responsible for your own luck in boxing.
“We’ve been practising that lucky punch all the time and if we land it we are going to do damage.”