What next for Burns?

That doesn't make it a weak division and if you were to include Gamboa & Broner you have two elite fighters.

DeMarco, Beltran, Quintero, Diaz, Shafikov, Estrada, Molina all serious talents that could beat Burns, Vasquez & Abril on there day. It has the deepest talent pool outside of the 147 division.

 

^Jack, by weak you mean guys not ranking high up in p4p lists then yes. But there are a number of fighters in the division who are good and could beat each other. You would favour someone like vasquez over burns but not by much. I would love the demarco fight for september. I have absolutely no interest in a rees match up.

 

:yep

 

Gamboa intends to drop back down to 130 after his next fight and Broner is will be at welterweight if he beats Malignaggi. To include them in a lightweight list is bizarre, given that neither of them are lightweights.

Those fighters that you listed are not elite fighters. They're decent boxers but I wouldn't go too far beyond that. Molina and Diaz both got wasted in a round not so long ago, DeMarco has been battered in one sided fashion by the best two fighters he's faced, Abril is too boring to be the dominant fighter he should be, Beltran is nothing special. I mean, come on...

The only interesting thing about this lightweight division is that there is no quality at the top either. Unlike other divisions, you don't have a bunch of good fighters being ranked behind a couple of great ones, the whole division is sub-par, which does make it interesting. "Interesting" is not "good" though. The division is weak because there isn't a fighter who is close to being elite in it. You could maybe argue Ricky Burns is the best lightweight in the world, yet his limitations were shown up last night by a guy making a huge step up in class.

It's a weak division, without question. It's competitive but there's very little quality in the top 10 compared to other divisions. The difference between lightweight and super middle, junior middle, welter, light welter, feather, junior feather etc., is huge. These divisions all have a number of elite fighters in them whereas lightweight doesn't have one.

 

Is there really a gulf in quality from Rees to DeMarco though? I think DeMarco is better but a fight between them two wouldn't be totally one sided. Their performances against Broner are quite telling, I think.

Either way, I stand by what I said about it being a weak division. There's very little quality there and all of the top 10 are beatable fighters. I do agree that it's competitive though but I stand by my claim that it's weak.

 

4 other posters disagree.

 

Not really. If people want to say it's a competitive division, I have no issue with that, but I called it "weak" because there's a lack of talent there. I don't think anyone who has seen the fighters in the top 10 would disagree with that.

 

"Very weak division"

 

Fair enough pal, you're entitled to your opinion. I just feel a competitive division is a strong division. Like you just said, top 10 are all beatable which makes for good match ups and plenty of interest as your not sure of what the outcome could be. A weak division is the HW one. There's one ATG fighter and who's so far ahead of the field and has no competitors. That's weak in my eyes.