Bute vs. Brinkley on Saturday night

By Boxing News - 10/10/2010 - Comments

Image: Bute vs. Brinkley on Saturday nightBy Dan Ambrose: International Boxing Federation (IBF) super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (26-0, 21 KO’s) is going to be showing how wide of a gold there is between him and the 2nd ranked IBF contender Jesse Brinkley (35-5, 22 KO’s) by beating him with embarrassing ease when the two fighters meet up on Saturday night at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada.

Brinkley, 33, earned the right to fight Bute by defeating Curtis Stevens by a 12 round unanimous decision in January in the IBF super middleweight title eliminator bout. Rather than keeping busy, Brinkley has been sitting waiting for his mandatory shot against Bute and will finally get his nice payday and beating to go along with in on October 15th.

Brinkley hasn’t really beaten anyone of note during his career other than Stevens, Joey Gilbert, Mike Paschall and Otis Griffin. There’s no big names on Brinkley’s resume. There, are, however, some losses to Joe Spina, Robin Reid, Sergio Mora and Alfonso Gomez that took place earlier in Brinkley’s career.

Presumably, Brinkley has improved since then, but he still looks very average and way out of his depth as he enters the fight with Bute this Saturday. Brinkley’s not a big puncher, so he’s going to have to try and outwork the faster and more elusive Bute if he’s counting on winning the fight.

That’s probably not going to happen because Bute like to stand and trade in an inside war the way that Brinkley likes to fight. Brinkley is going to have deal with Bute’s hit and run style and his movement. He’s not likely going to be able to adapt well with it.

Bute, 30, has looked good since his close call with Librado Andrade in October 2008. Bute probably should have been stopped in that fight in the 12th, and very likely would have been had the fight not taken place in his adopted country of Canada.

Whether you count that as a mental loss like I do or not, Bute did make up for his poor performance in the Andrade fight by stopping him in the 4th round in his rematch with him in November 2009.

In his last fight, Bute stopped Edison Miranda in the 4th round in April. Brinkley would appear to be a step down from Miranda and Andrade, and would could see a much quicker stoppage unless Brinkley can take some of Bute’s big shots.



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