Lucian Bute pulls out of Bolonti fight due to back injury

By Boxing News - 11/19/2014 - Comments

bute6666By Scott Gilfoid: In a not surprising situation, former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (31-2, 24 KOs) pulled out of his December 6th fight against former world title challenger Roberto Bolonti (35-3, 24 KOs) due to a back injury the soon to be 35-year-old Bute suffered while sparring for the fight.

The December 6th card will still take place, but instead of Bute-Bolonti in the main event, boxing fans will be seeing Jean Pascal vs. Don George.

Bute is at the point of his career where he’s starting to suffer injuries left and right. The injuries are getting in the way of him being able to fight on a regular basis unfortunately. Bute was out of the ring from November 2012 until January 2014 due to injuries. When he did come back, he fought Pascal and was soundly beaten.

Why Bute didn’t take a couple of tune-up fights before the Pascal fight is the big question, because normally you’d like to see a fighter take at least one tune-up after missing as much action as Bute did.

“It’s a case of bad luck,” said Bute’s promoter Jean Bedard via Fightnews.com. “When he decided to stay in boxing, we said that next time he came to fight he would be 100% ready. They judged that this injury that occurred during sparring that he wouldn’t be able to train for two weeks. It would be dangerous not having him at 100% so we decided it would not be a good idea to get into the ring. What I understand is that he will be able to fight at the beginning of 2015.”

Bute still has the talent to be a major player at 175, but he’s got to stay healthy and he needs to pick his fights a little better. It was a bad decision on Bute’s part to fight a guy like Jean Pascal at this point in his career.

It’s not to say that Bute couldn’t have beaten Pascal in his prime, but the timing wasn’t right for Bute to be facing Pascal when they met up earlier this year. I don’t think Bute has gotten over his loss to Carl Froch from 2012, as he’s only fought twice since then. Before Bute fights someone like Pascal, he ideally needs 3-4 solid wins under his belt in order to increase his self-confidence.



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