By Jim Dower: Former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (32-3-1, 25 KOs) successfully weighed in on Thursday afternoon inn coming in at 173.6 pounds for his WBC light heavyweight title eliminator fight against #1 WBC Eleider Alvarez (21-0, 10 KOs) on Friday night at the Centre Videotron in Quebec, Canada.
Alvarez weighed at 174.6lbs. The winner of the Bute vs. Alvarez fight will be the mandatory challenger to WBC 175lb champion Adonis “Super Man” Stevenson. This is a pay-per-view fight between Bute and Alvarez. The fight will be shown on Integrated Sports Media for $29.95 in the U.S.
(photo courtesy of Manny Montreal / The FightCity.com)
Bute has shown vulnerability in the past against fighters with good punching power. However, Eleider Alvarez might not be a big enough puncher to take advantage of Bute’s punch resistance. Alvarez’s career knockout percentage is just 48. That’s not very good. Alvarez hasn’t scored a knockout in 2 years since stopping Anatoley Dudchenko in the 2nd round in June 2015. Alvarez failed to knockout Robert Berridge, Alexander “Woody” Johnson and Isidro Ranoni Prieto. Those fighters have all been stopped recently b top contenders in the division.
If Alvarez isn’t able to knock Bute out in this fight, he could find himself getting knocked out. Bute is a good puncher, he’s not someone that you want to leave around for the full 12 rounds because he can do some damage with his power.
It’s a toss-up fight between Alvarez and Bute. With that said, Bute, 36, hasn’t won a fight in close to two years since his win over Andre Di Luisa in August 2015. However, Bute has looked good in his last two fights against James DeGale and Badou Jack. He fought them both to almost a standstill. He lost to DeGale by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2015, and then he fought to an 11 round draw against Jack last year in April 2016. Bute showed that he belonged in the same ring with those two fighters. What’s curious is why Bute moved up to 175 to fight for the right to face Stevenson.
Alvarez is coming off of a 10 round decision win over Norbert Dabrowski last December. It was a one-sided 10 round decision win for Alvarez. He looked good against a weak opponent. A fight in which Alvarez struggled was against Isaac Chilemba in November 2015. Alvarez won the fight by a narrow 12 round majority decision by the scores 114-114, 118-110 and 115-113. It was a fight that was a lot closer than the 118-110 score that one of the judges scored the fight.
If Bute can put in the type of performance he did in his last fight against Badou Jack last April, then Alvarez is going to have big problems on Friday. That version of Bute is probably going to be too good for Alvarez to deal with. Alvarez hasn’t been inside the ring with someone with the combination of boxing skills and punching power of Lucian Bute. To be sure, Bute isn’t the same fighter he was 10 years ago, but he’s still very good. Alvarez is going to have his hands full on Friday night in dealing with Bute’s power if he can’t knock him out early.