The £400k body blow
Boxing champion Burns left broke after bitter battle with ex-promoter
FORMER world boxing champion Ricky Burns has gone bankrupt, with debts of more than £400,000.
The Scots fighter declared himself insolvent this week after failing to settle large bills, and said his remaining assets are worth only £228.
The debts relate to a legal bill the former two-weight world champion had to foot following a courtroom battle with expromoter Frank Warren.
Burns, 31, of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, applied for bankruptcy after running up debts of £419,888, and it was approved by the Accountant in Bankruptcy, Scotland’s insolvency service, on Monday.
Kenneth Pattullo, from Glasgow insolvency practitioners Begbies Traynor, will take control of his assets and try to recover money owed to creditors. Both Burns and Warren declared victory after the legal battle at the High Court in London last year.
The judge ruled that Warren was not entitled to claim lost profits of at least £1.8million for Burns’s decision to leave his stable of fighters.
However, Mr Justice Knowles said Burns had not been entitled to end the promotional agreement with Warren’s company and as a result owed him unpaid commission.
At a costs hearing in December, Burns was ordered to pay his own £200,000 legal fees and a further £170,000, to cover Warren’s damages and costs, by the end of January. The judge ruled that Frank Warren Promotions owed Burns £102,000 purse money but said the fighter was unlikely to receive a penny from the liquidated company.
In a statement released at the time, Burns said: ‘The pressure that this case has put on me over the last 18 months has been immense and seriously affected me in and out of the ring.’
Last night, Frank Warren said: ‘I brought a claim against Ricky Burns because he wrongly terminated his management and promotional agreements. I offered to meet him to try to sort things out after he had terminated, but he did not take me up on this offer.
‘ Instead it seems as if he listened to Eddie Hearn... This advice was shown at court to be wrong. I’m sorry that it came to this, as under my guidance Ricky became a double world champion, but his reliance on the advice of others has unfortunately cost him dearly.’
Burns joined Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing on March 11, 2013, amid frustration over two postponed fights and unpaid earnings from his WBO lightweight win over Kevin Mitchell in September 2012.
After two unconvincing defences, he lost his title to Terence Crawford and has failed to impress in his comeback fights.
He is hoping to revive his career in America with a clash against former world champion Omar Figueroa. He will take on the unbeaten 25- year- old i n San Antonio, Texas on May 9 – his first fight in the US.
Burns is not the first highprofile Scots boxer to battle cash woes. Former WBO featherweight champion Scott Harrison, who has faced drink problems and a string of assault charges, was declared bankrupt in 2007.
Ex-European welterweight king Gary Jacobs was made bankrupt in 2001 over an unpaid council tax bill on his home.
‘Advice of others cost him dearly’