RICKY BURNS insists he won’t shy away from the prospect of a unification fight with Terence Crawford, believing it would be an even bigger bout than his proposed match-up with Adrien Broner. Crawford ended Burns’ reign as world lightweight champion with a unanimous points victory in Glasgow almost three years ago and now has his sights set on taking Burns’ WBA super-lightweight title to sit alongside his WBC and WBO belts.

The American has taken to Twitter to challenge Burns and his promoter Eddie Hearn to make the re-match happen and Burns says he would relish another crack at Crawford.

“Terence Crawford’s name has been mentioned,” said Scotland’s first three-weight world champion. “He was tweeting Eddie Hearn asking what we are doing next. He wants the WBA title, so that could definitely be possible. I would fight him again. Whoever I fight, if it’s one of these big names, none of them are going to be easy. I know that myself.

“I would say fighting Crawford would be a bigger fight than Broner. For me, that would be the bigger of the two. He [Crawford] has the WBO and the WBC titles, so we would be fighting for all those belts. It would be a huge unification fight.

“My last fight against him probably just wasn’t the right time for me. I was still recovering from a broken jaw in my previous fight [against Raymundo Beltran]. But I was told that, if I didn’t fight him, I would be stripped of my title. So I had to jump straight back into full training even with my jaw the way it was. But I would be more confident now of getting the job done against him.”

Burns expects his next fight to take place in the SSE Hydro in Glasgow but is still holding out for the possibility of a bout in Las Vegas at some point in 2017.

“It would be great to get another fight in Glasgow,” he added. “The fans are unbelievable. But if the opportunity came along to go to America and fight one of the big names, then so be it. I would be happy to do it. I’ve always said that if there’s one place I’ve always wanted to fight, it would be Vegas. Fingers crossed that it happens.”

- Ricky Burns was promoting the launch of North Lanarkshire Council’s Sporting Hall of Fame. Full details www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/halloffame