A Closer Look at Ryan Burnett

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Belfast loves a hero and Belfast loves a fight.

Combine both and you have a true champion; a fighter.

The amount of praise given to Barry McGuigan, 32-3, 28 KO’s, was then showered on Carl Frampton, 24-1, 14 KO’s is testimony to that. Whilst the nights of hearing Barry’s dad belt out Danny Boy are now in our memories and the nights of seeing the “Jackal” beat the best are supposedly hastening towards the same sunset, the rise of a son of the McGuigan camp has to be current WBA and former IBF bantamweight champion, Ryan Burnett, 18-0, 9 KO’s.

Burnett is back in action, defending his WBA title, after having to vacate the IBF one, in Cardiff on the Anthony Joshua/Joseph Parker undercard on March 31st.

Undefeated in 18 fights, this is one son of the Belfast streets who has not had it easy in driving his success forward and becoming the best in his weight category. On March 31st he climbs in against the tough Venezuelan Yonfrez Parejo, 21-2-1, 10 KO’s, to prove that winning the IBF title and then adding the WBA championship belt was no fluke.

He goes into the contest with former champions, Lee Haskins, 35-4, 14 KO’s, and Zhanat Zhakiyanov, 27-2, 18 KO’s, in his wake and the fight crowd in the Belfast pubs and houses shall be tuning into only one channel that night to see if the legacy of this “wee man” is likely to match those of the ones who have gone before him.

It’s a tall order.

He shall be standing, defending his title in front of 80,000 ticket holders and a global audience on pay per view of millions. Having unified the division by holding two belts he is now ready for new challenges. His team knew that, having won the WBA belt from Zhakiyanov that one of the baubles might need to be sacrificed to allow for the other one to be decided between Burnett and a mandatory challenger. They thought it was all sorted.

Ironically, the man against whom he battled for the IBF belt played a part in him having to give it up. Haskins was due to fight Emmanuel Rodriguez, 17-0, 12 KO’s for the interim title, but that fight was cancelled.

It meant that the IBF now had a mandatory challenger for Burnett, as had the WBA. The problem was, they did not have the same guy so one had to take precedence as the IBF challenger, Rodriguez, having lost out on his interim world title shot was not up for a chat – he wanted purse bids!

The WBA fight had already been in place and a fight in front of an AJ crowd – no way would you give that up! It was the IBF strap that was given up and now the WBA title in on the line.

The road to such acclaim has been a particularly tough one for Burnett and has come on the back of some of the most heart rending stories I have read recently of how a boxer has made it to his zenit.

Not for Burnett was a silver spoon or world class accommodation made available for his growth and development in the sport; it has all come from a particular form of the hard way.

Winning against Zhakiyanov put him up against a man he knew very well; Zhakiyanov’s trainer, Ricky Hatton. Hatton had been instrumental in the start of Burnett’s professional career, being his trainer for his first four fights.

The night he won his second belt from Zhakiyanov it was four years after being homeless and on the streets.

Nobody who knew Burnett was or is surprised at his success.

In 2010 he won World Youth Gold.

In 2012 he joined Hatton’s gym in England, having come over from Northern Ireland.

Just before his first professional contest a routine medical scan turned up a brain abnormality. He got the news in a phone call that he would never fight again. He was far from home and in a hotel room.

Alone.

He refused to give up.

He did all that was asked medically and a little bit more to convince doctors that they could let him back in the ring. It took a year, but they relented and Burnett went in for four fights with Hatton.

His career then stalled.

He decided to boldly take the step that things were not happening for him and left the Hatton’s.

In an act of tremendous kindness, Hatton lent him a jeep and for 6 weeks, which Burnett and his father called it home; they slept in it as he had nowhere else to live.

Burnett then found himself working alongside world class trainer, Adam Booth. Booth transformed his career, but first had to be the climb up and he started in a small show in West Belfast in 2014.
By June 2017 he was fighting and defeating Lee Haskins for the IBF version of the world title.

Six months later, he added the WBA title.

His name is now uttered amongst the best in the business and the best from the Provence of Northern Ireland. His face is now well known and in a community bedecked with murals, his physique is now prominent amongst them.

If he comes through the next world title he then faces a number of people who may want to test his world level status. Principal amongst them has to be the WBO champion Zolani Tete, 26-3, 21 KO’s. A fight with Tete would be the biggest test of his own career to date and if rival promoter, Frank Warren, has his way it will be one that shall always be sitting on the cards as the litmus test of his ability to call himself world class.

There is also the WBC champion, Luis Nery, 25-0, 19 KO’s, and whoever takes the IBF belt as well but first there is Cardiff and 80,000 packed in to see Anthony Joshua and the next stage of his journey, but, as so often happens, the real stories are underneath the headlines and with lesser lauded participants. Whilst Burnett puts his title on the line, the memories of living in a car, taking the chance of leaving home to fight and convincing the medics he should fight at all make him a guy who will tell the tale from the end of his fists.

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