By Matt Stein: Since capturing the IBF super middleweight title in October 2007, with a 11th round TKO victory over the hard hitting Alejandro Berrio, the unbeaten Canadian based Romanian Lucian Bute (26-0, 21 KO’s) has taken on a number of contenders in defending his IBF title.

Indeed, Bute has successfully defended his International Boxing Federation super middleweight title five times, beating a 38-year-old William Joppy, dodging being knocked out by LIbrado Andrade [ many people think that Bute should have been stopped in the 12th round of that fight because he took a long time getting up and couldn’t stand on his own two feet without leaning against the ropes in this fight that took place in Canada], defeated former middleweight Fulgencio Zuniga, beat Andrade again in a rematch, and then defeated former middleweight champion Edison Miranda three months ago in April.

Now, those are all good victories, to be sure. However, there’s nothing there that really jumps out at you in terms of really tough opposition. Miranda (33-5, 29 KO’s) had already been beaten by Kelly Pavlik, Arthur Abraham (twice) and Andre Ward by the time that Bute fought him.

Sure, Bute stopped Miranda in an impressive fashion, but he was facing someone who had already been softened up by Pavlik, Abraham and Ward coming into the fight. This wasn’t the Miranda that took on Abraham during their first fight back in 2006, a fight in which Miranda broke Abraham’s jaw and had him badly hurt on a number of times in the fight.

Joppy was an old 38 when he fought Bute, and was at the tail end of his career by then having already been beaten by Bernard Hopkins, Felix Trinidad and Jermain Taylor. It’s good that Bute was able to beat Joppy, but it wasn’t anything that hadn’t already been done before three times previously.

Bute struggled badly with Andrade, getting badly hurt in the 11th round and then knocked down in the 12rth. It looked for the most part like Bute was knocked out by Andrade, because the referee stopped the count a couple of times to give Andrade a warning to go to the neutral corner. Instead of staying focused on giving Bute the count, the Canadian referee kept turning his head and looking at Andrade for some reason.

The time that it took for the referee to walk over the middle of the round and motion for Andrade to go back to his corner seems to have allowed Bute to crawl to his feet. However, even then he was never asked to walk towards the referee and was seen leaning against the ropes the whole time instead of standing without the aid of the ropes. Whether you agree with the decision or not, it wasn’t an impressive performance from Bute. Andrade had earlier been totally dominated by Mikkel Kessler a year earlier in March 2007, losing every round of the fight to Kessler. When you compare Kessler’s performance against Andrade to that of Bute, it’s pretty clear that Kessler was far superior in his fight.

Zuniga, a decent middleweight at one time, had already been destroyed by Kelly Pavlik in 2005, and defeated again, this time by Denis Inkin in a failed attempt to win the WBO super middleweight title in September 2008. Beating Zuniga was a good thing, but not enough to make you think that Bute deserves to be considered the number #1 super middleweight in the world.

Bute will be defending his IBF title on October 15th against Jesse Brinkley. While I like Brinkley as a fighter, I don’t see him as being in the same class as other top fighters in the super middleweight division like Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Kessler, Carl Froch and Abraham. Beating him won’t be a big deal, because he’s not considered to be one of the very best fighters at the very top of the division.