Bika vs. Mendy winner to fight Bute

By Boxing News - 07/08/2010 - Comments

By Jason Kim: The July 31st bout between super middleweight contenders Sakio Bika (28-3-2, 19 KO’s) and unbeaten Jean Paul Mendy (28-0-1, 16 KO’s) will be an IBF super middleweight eliminator bout with the winner of the fight becoming mandatory challenger for the unbeaten IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (26-0, 21 KO’s) in the near future.

The Bika-Mendy fight will take place on the undercard of the Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Juan Diaz card at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. As of now, the Bika vs. Mendy fight will only have highlight clips shown to boxing fans that purchase the card on pay-per-view.

However, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is working behind the scenes to have the Bika-Mendy fight shown in its entirety right before the PPV bouts start. This would give boxing fans the chance to see the Bika-Mendy fight and would help attract interest for a future fight involving the winner of that fight against Bute.

Although Bika is a fine fighter, he was already thoroughly dominated by Bute three years ago in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss in an IBF super middleweight title eliminator match in June 2007.

Bika has won all six fights since that time, beating fighters like Peter Manfredo Jr., Jaidon Codrington, Sam Soliman and Donny McCrary. However, Bika hasn’t fought in a year and hasn’t taken on the best fighters in the division such as Carl Froch, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler and Arthur Abraham.

Boxing fans want to see Bute face fighters like Chad Dawson and Kelly Pavlik, and the best fighters from the Super Six tournament. They might not be very excited about seeing Bute fight Bika again or the 36-year-old Mendy, who few fans have heard of in the U.S.

Bute despite holding down the IBF super middleweight title since 2007, hasn’t faced the most dangerous fighters in the super middleweight division. He’s had fights against Librado Andrade, Edison Miranda, William Joppy, Fulgencio Zuniga and Alejandro Berrio, but not against the Super Six tourney fighters. Bute is fighting Jesse Brinkley, a little known American fighter in October.

By facing the Bute-Mendy winner, Bute will be continuing his trend of taking on the less popular fighters. He needs to somehow get out of his comfort zone and take fights against Pavlik and Dawson until the Super Six tourney is through. Bute will then, if he’s still the IBF super middleweight champion, could fight one of them.



Comments are closed.