I dunno how you can give him much credit. I mean fair play to him for sticking it out and riding the storm, he deserves props for that but this is one of the ebest cases of a fighter losing the fight rather than the other winning it. Even went Gonzalez was spent Burns didn't do anything to him and effectively won the last two rounds on being more active rather than actually landing anything worthwhile.
He was landing enough that Gonzalez obviously felt he couldn't go on, whether he was injured or tired. I hate that mentality of "so and so lost the fight, rather than the other guy won". It completely discredits the other man. Look at it this way:
Burns was barely landing, he couldn't get his jab going and he was getting hit frequently. Gonzalez was dictating the pace and range of the fight, was landing the hurtful shots, and had Burns on wobbly legs in the 7th. Most fair observers had him up by at least six rounds to one, at best for Burns.
Yet, the man on the bad side of the fight is the one that stays strong, keeps working and starts to have some success and is controlling the fight right after getting hurt. It's easy to be confident and positive when you're dishing out the hurt, but to do it when you know you're losing and struggling to find a solution is deserving of real credit, IMO.
He had a crap night, fought as poorly as he has in years, and still found a way to win. It's reductive to say Gonzalez threw it away. Whether through his toughness, refusal to wilt or whatever, Burns made him quit. It was a bad performance, but he got the result.
