Bute vs. Zuniga on March 13th

By Boxing News - 01/22/2009 - Comments

bute34435By Sean McDaniel: After winning a his last fight by a controversial fashion, International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (23-0, 18 KOs) will be making his return on March 13th, defending his title against the IBF #10 contender Fulgencio Zuniga (22-3-1, 19 KOs) at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Bute, 28, had been in the planning stages to fight contender Mads Larsen, but he opted to fight WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler instead.

Bute’s last fight, a 12-round unanimous decision over Librado Andrade in October, was highly disputed outside of Canada where Bute now lives. Bute controlled the first 10 rounds of the bout without many problems but in the 11th round, he was nailed by a big left hand by Andrade and hurt.

However, the Canadian based referee seemed to get Andrade’s way as he tried to finish Bute off in the round, separating him from Bute just when he was in the process of trying to finish him off. In the next round, Andrade badly hurt Bute again after tagging him with a left to the head.

Shortly after that, Andrade knocked Bute down with a right hand. The referee seemed to take his time in administering the count to the downed Bute, looking around the ring and searching for Andrade, whom he told to go to the neutral corner.

After this, the referee started counting but while he was counting, he turned around and looked back at Andrade and noticed that he had strayed a few feet from the neutral corner. The referee then stopped counting and walked to the center of the ring and told Andrade to go back to the neutral corner. After this, the referee went back and continued his counting of Bute, who had gotten up by this time.

The clock then ran out on the fight and Bute was awarded the decision due to his substantial points lead in the earlier rounds. Naturally, the fight was marred because of the referee’s focus on Andrade going to the neutral corner, which many boxing fans felt was a way of giving Bute extra time to get up from the knockdown.

Following the fight, there was hope that Bute would do the honorable thing and give Andrade an immediate rematch so that the controversy could be partially cleared up. However, Bute instead choose to make a non-mandatory defense of his IBF title, initially looking at fighting Larsen.

With Larsen now out of the picture, Bute faces Zuniga, 31, from Colombia, who may be every bit as good as Andrade despite only being ranked at #10 in the IBF. Zuniga recently lost a controversial 12-round decision to Denis Inkin in September in a fight for the vacant WBO super middleweight title.

Zuniga appeared to win 10 of the 12 rounds of the fight, which took place in Germany where Inkin resides, yet Zuniga ended up losing by lopsided scores from the judges. In Zuniga’s other two defeats, he was beaten by Kelly Pavlik and Daniel Santos. In the Pavlik fight, Zuniga was fighting Pavlik to a standstill through nine rounds until suffering a bad cut, causing the fight to be stopped in the 9th and giving Pavlik a TKO win. However, Zuniga was giving Pavlik lot’s of trouble in the fight and landing almost at will.

Zuniga is going to be a very tough fight for Bute, considering that he never stops coming forward and throwing punches. In a lot of ways, Zuniga is an improved version of Andrade, with better hand speed, more power and a higher work rate. He’ll be a lot of problems for Bute and unless Zuniga suffers a cut, Bute is going to have to work hard to earn a decision.

Given that the fight will be taking place in Canada, where foreign opponents sometimes have problems winning decisions over home town fighters, Zuniga may have to knock Bute out to win. That may not be as hard as people think, however.

If Bute has any lingering after effects of being hurt badly in his fight against Andrade, Zuniga could very well take advantage of this and knock him out if he can get to him in the later rounds. It won’t be easy catching up to Bute, though, because he tends to move all the time and isn’t easy to hit until late in the fight. He seemed to wear out under the constant pressure in his fight with Andrade, so the key for Zuniga is to keep him on the run the whole time and make him use his legs as much as possible.



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