Lucian Bute vs. Jean Pascal fight to take place on January 18th

By Boxing News - 08/12/2013 - Comments

bute2By Scott Gilfoid: The rescheduled fight between former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (31-1, 24 KO’s) and former WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (27-2-1, 16 KO’s) will be taking place on January 18th, according to RingTV.

The two were supposed to meet on May 25th, but unfortunately the talented 33-year-old Bute hurt his left hand while training, and that wiped out that fight date.

At any rate, contracts are signed for their fight in January, and now all they’ve got to do is start getting ready at some point.

Bute has bounced back nicely from a 5th round stoppage loss to Carl Froch last May by beating Denis Grachev by a 12 round unanimous decision last November. Bute showed some of his old magic by out-boxing Grachev instead of repeating the same mistake he made in the Froch fight by going out and trying to slug it out with him.

Where Bute’s career got a little sidetracked was with all the soft matchmaking that was done for him with guys like Librado Andrade, Glen Johnson, Jean-Paul Mendy, Brian Magee, Jesse Brinkley, Edison Miranda, Fulgencio Zuniga and William Joppy in the past five years.

Those fights really hurt Bute’s ability to stay sharp, so that when he was put in with Froch, Bute tried to destroy him the same way he had those guys, and it failed to happen.

Had Bute been facing better opposition in the last five years, he’d have likely boxed circles around Froch last year, because he would have known better than to stand and fight Froch’s fight by slugging with him.

Pascal lost his WBC title to Bernard Hopkins in a rematch in May 2011 in a 12 round decision loss. After that fight, Pascal took a long break and didn’t return to the ring until beating Aleksy Kuziemski last December by a 12 round unanimous decision.



Comments are closed.