WHEN Ricky Burns made his professional debut against Wooody Greenway at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow on October 21 2001, nobody in attendance could have foreseen the epic sweep-of-the-ring career that would follow, one that would consist of more highs and lows than any Greek tragedy.

The event, as every event in the month of October 2001, was dominated by the looming shadow of September 11, which just a month prior had succeeded in turning everything upside down and inside out. Nothing, all of a sudden, seemed to make sense anymore, with that that was holy being profaned and all that was solid melted into air.

Yet life, as they say, goes on, and for an 18-year-old kid from Bellshill in the west of Scotland, nothing was more important than this four-round professional debut, which as expected he won against his much older journeyman opponent.

A full 53 fights later on September 23 2023, the curtain finally came down on Ricky’s remarkable career against old rival and now departed friend, Willie Limond, at Glasgow’s Braehead Arena.

As with his debut back in 2001, this would be an encounter made more significant by another event of world-historical importance — this time in the form, just two short weeks later, of the break-out of Gaza by various Palestinian resistance groups and their incursion into southern Israel.

It seemed to confirm that where Ricky Burns was concerned, major events stalked his boxing career. Or indeed perhaps it was the other way round, and Ricky’s boxing career stalked those events.

In terms of titles, Ricky’s achievements are up there, yet for some reason his career has lacked the accolades those same achievements deserved. Never one for the profanity and histrionics that have become all too common at boxing press conferences in the modern era, perhaps Ricky’s humility and calm demeanour, while marking him out as a man of uncommon decency, did not fit with the mantra that it’s the wheel that squeaks which gets the grease.

But for Ricky Burns, humility was a baked in feature of his character. So much so that for a considerable period he retained his Saturday job at at sports shop in his home town of Coatbridge. It still boggles the mind that he would do so long after he no longer had to.

I was privileged to cover Ricky’s fights up close and personal at ringside back in the day for this very newspaper. His popularity when in his prime was evidenced by the cacophony of noise that erupted whenever he made his entrance to the ring. These were sold-out affairs, with his all-action style ensuring that he kept the fans on the proverbial edge of their seats whenever he fought. What he lacked in technical ability, he more than made up for with the unbounded intensity and determination with which he went about his craft.

Such was this intensity and determination that Ricky once fought a full 10 rounds of a 12-round championship fight with a broken jaw. This he did in Glasgow on September 7 2013 against Rayumndo Beltram.

The contest ended in controversial draw, which allowed Ricky to retain his WBO lightweight title. At the final bell, however, the title was the last thing on Ricky’s mind, as he rushed from the ring cradling his jaw and made his way straight to hospital. It was brutal, but at the same time there was a kind of beauty within the brutality. As someone once said: “The cure for pain is in the pain.”

When Ricky Burns climbed into the ring at the SEC Centre in Glasgow to once again defend his WBO lightweight title — this time against unbeaten US challenger Terence Crawford on March 2, 2014 — he did so entitled to feel like a man returning to the scene of a crime he never committed but was convicted and found guilty of anyway.

Against the aforementioned Beltram, he had been forced to reach down to that place that resides within every human being, but that most don’t even know exists after years spent avoiding risk, danger and hardship. It’s called the human spirit, and from it is derives the will to endure unspeakable agony in the process of prevailing against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Against Beltran, make no mistake, Ricky looked into an abyss. What he saw there, only he could tell. The very idea of a man returning to the ring just a few months after what he went through, fighting through the searing and scorching agony of a broken jaw, seemed inordinately perverse.

But for Ricky Burns, boxing was his business and his business was boxing — and so there he was, making his way to the ring accompanied by the usual wall of noise in yet another sold out Glasgow arena.

Terence Crawford’s own boxing credentials followed him into the ring that night in Glasgow, all the way from his home town of Omaha, Nebraska, installing him as clear favourite to do what a slew of others had failed to in parting Ricky from his world title.

From near enough the opening ball, it was evident that Ricky Burns was no longer the fighter of old. His normally sharp precision jab was not the weapon it had always been, replaced instead by a desperate and uncommonly mistimed impostor that repeatedly failed to keep the younger and sharper challenger at bay.

It was to be Terence Crawford’s night in every department. In sum, he out Ricky-ed Ricky when it came to intensity and aggression, forcing the by now veteran champion back onto the ropes time and time again. Yet still Ricky refused to surrender, trying and trying and trying to pull off the impossible all the way up to the final bell.

Still today, all these years later, Terence Crawford has no hesitation in stating — despite having gone on to since to establish himself as an all time great of the sport — that his finest night in a boxing ring was against Ricky Burns in Glasgow back in 2014.

Today, Ricky runs a successful gym in Motherwell, which he opened in 2023. Mighty Rick’s is the name above door that greets its members on the way in.

Waiting for them behind the reception is one of the greatest fighters Scotland ever produced, whose affable personality and down-to-Earth qualities are those of a man who fought not for money for fame or glory, but instead for the love of a sport that all too often did not love him back.