By Luke Furman

Promoter Eddie Hearn said challenger Jose Gonzalez needed to win one more round to secure a twelve round decision victory over WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns in Glasgow, Scotland. Gonzalez started quick and built a strong lead after outboxing Burns in the first half of the fight. He hurt Burns in the seventh and appeared to exhaust himself by trying to finish the Scottish boxer off. After doing nothing the following two rounds, Gonzalez refused to come out for the tenth.

It was revealed after the fight that all three of the official judges had Gonzalez up 87-84 going into the tenth.

Gonzalez claimed a left hand injury, but Hearn doesn't fully believe that.

"I think there is more to it. If you're up and you know that you're up...the guy could switch hit. You could see it in the corner, two rounds before that, he was very tired. If you have three rounds to survive to win a world title, and you pull out because of a bad hand....I think there is more to it than that. I think Ricky just broke his heart in that seventh round, he hit Ricky with everything he had and [Ricky] came back. He was up, all he had to do was win one more round to be world champion.  To pull out under those circumstances, something had to be really, really bad. And I don't think a broken hand [was enough]. I really think Ricky broke his heart," Hearn said.

Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.