By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute is really showing his courage by choosing to fight in Carl Froch’s home city and arena in Nottingham, UK on May 26th. I’m starting to think this is a really bad idea for Bute to take this fight in that venue. While doing research for this article, I re-watched Dirrell’s fight with Froch from October 2009, which took place in Nottingham, and I came to conclusion that Bute might have royally screwed up by agreeing to fight Froch there.

Dirrell put in one of those most amazing defensive performances I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. He had Froch whiffing at air all night with his shots and was seriously clowning Froch in front of his own fans. I gave Froch three rounds in the fight but in truth, I only gave him one real round. The other two were more mercy rounds in which I figured the screaming from the crowd would influence the judges enough to give him those rounds. But Dirrell basically won every round apart from a couple of rounds. Dirrell incredibly lost a point for holding, when it was Froch who should have been the one who lost points for the rabbit punches, holding and hitting and the body slam.

Bute is going to have to really look for a KO against Froch if he wants to make sure he doesn’t go home like Dirrell with a “L” on his resume because I think it might be incredibly difficult for Bute to come out of there with a win. Bute doesn’t have the defensive skills that Dirrell has, so he’d going to get hit a lot more than Dirrell did. Froch couldn’t even lay a glove on The Matrix all night long. He will be landing against Bute. Also, Bute doesn’t throw as much punches as Dirrell, and that’s going to make it very difficult for him to come out of there with the win. I mean, Bute is going to clearly beat Froch but getting the win is the real problem.