By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute won’t be getting the fight that he wanted to get against former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch on April 14th, because Froch revealed during the Carl Frampton vs. Kris Hughes fight last Saturday that his next fight will be in Nottingham, England, not in Montreal, Canada against Bute.

Wise move by Froch to escape what would have been a sure thing loss to Bute in Canada.

Froch said this to Sky Sports during the Frampton-Hughes fight: “We’d love to get a fight back on home soil. It will be good to fight on British soil; give my fans something they want, and then look for another world title [against] maybe the likes of Lucian Bute. First things first, maybe early May in England.”

Froch supposedly is going to be facing a top 10 opponent, but there are a lot of soft fighters in the top 10 that aren’t worth much and I can see Froch looking to face one of them instead of someone that can actually fight. The sanctioning bodies often rank guys that have no business on this earth being ranked in the top 15, let alone in the top 10. Froch will find a soft opponent to get a payday at home in Nottingham.

Froch isn’t even talking about the Bute fight in definitive terms any longer, and you know that’s not a good thing if you’re Bute and his promoters from InterBox. They were counting on facing Froch and getting a win over him to make some money in Montreal and then go from that fight to a unification bout against WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward. Now Bute and InterBox are going to have to look for another world class option to fight next in order to satisfy Ward’s requirements of Bute facing and beating an ‘A’ level fighter before he’ll give him a fight.

The choices for Bute are pretty limited in order to satisfy Ward’s requirements. Here are the options for Bute if he and his promoter are serious about wanting to fight Ward:

1. Andre Dirrell
2. Anthony Dirrell
3. Mikkel Kessler
4. Robert Stieglitz
5. Kelly Pavlik
6. Arthur Abraham

I can’t see Bute getting fights with any of them other than Andre Dirrell, but the chances of that happening are kind of low because Dirrell reportedly doesn’t want any part of fighting Bute in Canada because he doesn’t want to be on the losing end of a hometown decision or have to come into the fight faced with the task of having to knock Bute out to get a win.