By William Mackay: Former WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal sees IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (30-0, 24 KO’s) perhaps not being ready for both the hostile crowd of 10,000+ fans that meet him in Nottingham, England for his May 26th fight against Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s), and with the power that Froch has. Pascal believes the combination of the crowd and Froch’s power will be a big negative for Bute.

Pascal told Cyberpresse “It’s a very enthusiastic crowd, but also a crowd very, very hostile…when Bute enters the arena, he will hear 10,000 hooligans shouting…This is very intimidating…Bute will not be used to getting hit so hard by Froch. I know it will hurt. I know it will hurt because it hurt me.”

Pascal was beaten by Froch by a 12 round decision in December 2008. Pascal regrets going to war with Froch in that fight, and wished he had boxed him instead of trying to slug it out. Pascal advises Bute not to try and beat Froch by slugging it out with him because he sees as the wrong road to take in trying to beat him due to Froch’s game bring built around slugging.

I don’t think for a second that Bute will try and punch with Froch, so Pascal has nothing to really worry about here. If you look at the few fights where Bute fought someone with decent power, you’ll notice that Bute likes to hit and back away immediately to avoid getting hit. He throws a lot of jabs to the midsection and head, but then backs off quickly at the first signs of aggression from his opponent. He can do this all night long and is good at fighting while backing away from an opponent. Bute is also quite skilled at stopping dead in his tracks to land a hard body shot at his forward rushing opponent. He’s very difficult to fight because of those things, and seems to do especially well against pressure fighters like Froch. The way to beat Bute is to beat him in a jabbing war, and hit him hard each time there’s an opening. If Froch rushes him, he’ll get clowned because many of Bute’s opponents have tried that game and he knows how to beat that kind of attack.