By Chris Williams: IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (23-0, 18 KOs) can sure dish out the punishment, but he can’t take it for anything. Challenger Librado Andrade (27-2, 21 KOs) rallied from behind in the 12th round, and dropped Bute in the final seconds of the fight with a perfect right hand to the head. The referee somehow got confused with everything that was going on in the ring, and got a late start in giving Bute the count, probably giving him enough time to have stayed down and rested sufficiently for three full ten counts from the looks of it.

As badly hurt as Bute was, he needed it. He got up finally after what appeared to be ions, and was still unable to stand up without leaning back against the ropes for support. The fight ran out after the standing eight count, and Bute held onto his IBF title. However, there’s going to be a lot of controversy stirring from this bout in the coming days, because the referee looked like he didn’t handle the situation in the best manner possible and may have given Bute a little too much time to recover before starting the count. The fight was in Montreal, Canada, Bute’s new adopted city, so I would expect him to be given a little more time to recover if he was hurt. There’s nothing really wrong with that, because it’s done everywhere.

But it’s still probably going to create a lot of anger because Bute looked seriously hurt and probably too hurt to continue if the fight had survived any further action in the round. However, Bute looked good, and much better than Andrade, who he gave a boxing lesson to over the course of the 12-round fight. Andrade might have stood a better chance if he had fought as hard as he did in the 12th round as he did in the other rounds. That’s his fault, and he has only himself to blame for making that serious mistake.

Bute kept his guard low for most of the fight, and was easily hittable if Andrade had tried hard to corner him in the earlier rounds. Andrade didn’t, though. He mostly followed Bute around, trying to throw harmless body punches while absorbing a tremendous amount of head shots from Bute.

In comparison to Bernard Hopkins’s performance against Kelly Pavlik last week, Bute looked much better than Hopkins, and I would give him an excellent chance at beating the old veteran. Bute has great boxing skills and I think he’s probably the best super middleweight in the division with maybe only Mikkel Kessler giving him any real competition. Bute will probably take a lot of criticism for his fight with Andrade, though, and if I’m a betting man, I’m guessing there will be a huge cry for a rematch between the two of them. I don’t see Andrade doing any better, because Bute will have improved on his last performance and will beat him even easier than he did this time out. In the end, Bute looked great for 11 rounds, and won the battle but didn’t finish well.