By Scott Gilfoid: Well, it seems that IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (29-0, 24 KO’s) and his promoters at InterBox prefer Carl Froch as the next opponent on April 14th and are willing to still fight him even if it means that the fight might not be televised by SHOWTIME. Wow! Talk about being willing to stand by your ideals, but this is silly.

SHOWTIME wants Bute to face the talented Andre Dirrell (20-1, 14 KO’s) on April 14th rather than trotting out Froch, who was beaten about as bad a fighter can in his last fight against WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward last month. You can see why SHOWTIME might be reluctant to pay to show that fight to American viewers because Froch looked like a fighter with arthritis in his arms and shoulders. Talk about slow and rickety.

Froch looked absolutely horrible in that fight and deserved to lose at least 10 of the 12 rounds. I know the scoring was jacked up with a couple of judges coming off with some weird scoring that had Froch only losing by a 7-5 score. But SHOWTIME is in show business and that’s why they didn’t want to see Bute fight Froch after the way he was exposed by Ward, Mikkel Kessler and Dirrell.

SHOWTIME wants to see the best fight the best, and that’s why they their preference was for Bute to fight Dirrell. But InterBox doesn’t want that fight and instead will be looking to put together an April 14th fight with Froch. You can basically call it academic at this point that the Froch-Bute fight will be made unless Bute’s camp doesn’t offer Froch a good deal.

Frankly, I think Froch is insane if he agrees to fight Bute in Canada and this has nothing to do with Dirrell or anything. I just think it’s plain stupid for Froch to fight over there where he might need to not only knock Bute out to win but to knock him out cold to get a win. We all saw Bute’s first fight with Librado Andrade where Bute appeared to be knocked out but then the referee spent valuable time telling Andrade to go to the neutral corner over and over again while Bute was on the canvas.

Does Froch want that to happen to him? Froch is much better off fighting in Nottingham against a top 10 contender and waiting for the smoke to clear from the Mikkel Kessler vs. Robert Stieglitz fight in April. Froch could then take on the winner of that fight and maybe get lucky. Froch won’t get lucky against Bute because that guy will be fighting at home in Montreal, and he’s impossible to beat there with his hit and retreat fighting style.

Dirrell is the real unlucky guy here, because he just got passed over by Bute’s team for a title fight. But Dirrell will get his shot soon enough. Bute will still be there as the champion after he beats Froch in April and I doubt that WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward will waste time fighting Bute after this because Ward wanted Bute to prove himself against an A level fighter like Dirrell, and here Bute is taking the back door to try and get a unification bout against Ward. Forget that.

Ward needs to tell Bute in plain language that he now needs to not only beat Froch, which was never on Ward’s list for Bute to begin with, but also take on both of the Dirrell brothers – Anthony and Andre – and try and beat them to get a shot at Ward. If Bute and his promoter interested in facing the Dirrell brothers, then they obviously don’t deserve to fight Ward.

It’s as simple as that. You can’t take the back door to try and get a fight against the best fighter in the super middleweight division. Also, Bute needs to fight the Dirrell brothers so that it can help bring more interest in a Ward-Bute fight, because right now the fight wouldn’t mean a whole heck of a lot because Bute hasn’t been as visible as Ward has been in the United States in terms of competitive fights.

To be sure, a number of Bute’s fights have been shown on American television but they’ve all been pretty much mismatches against fodder opposition. Bute needs to fight the Dirrell brothers and prove that he can beat ‘A’ level fighters and that in turn will draw interest in an eventual finals type bout against Ward. The thing of it is, I smell fear from Bute and his promoter and I don’t see them EVER facing the Dirrell brothers because I think both of them would beat Bute. But those should be Ward’s rules – no Dirrell brothers, no fight. Bute has to prove himself worthy of fighting Ward and Froch doesn’t count.