The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Burns wants Glasgow crowd to play their part in unification fight with Indongo
Boxing: Scot vows to show Julius Indongo he is not the retiring type
Ricky Burns intends to show Julius Indongo he is not the retiring type when they clash in their super-lightweight unification fight on Saturday.
The unbeaten IBF and IBO world champion from Namibia is in Glasgow preparing to face WBA holder Burns at the SSE Hydro.
Speaking before a public workout at the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow, when asked how he rated the Scot, Indongo said: “It is an honour to have him in front of me although I never expected it. I heard he was the same age as me, I had heard of him when I was young.”
Burns went through his paces later, but before he did he said Indongo is set to discover that he is still very much a champion.
“This is only the second time fighting out of Namibia so we will see how he is going to like the Glasgow crowd and we will also see how he is going to like it in the second half of the fight when I am sticking it on him,” he said .
Indongo won his belt with a firstround knockout of Russia’s Eduard Troyanovsky in Moscow in December.
However, Burns, making the second defence of the title he picked up last May, played down what was a stunning victory.
He said: “It was the first 30 seconds of the first round, so you can’t really take a lot from it. He could have caught that boy cold. It could have happened to anybody. Before that fight he had 20 fights and 10 knockouts. Obviously he can punch a bit.”