By Jason Kim: Unbeaten IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (27-0, 22 KO’s) and his promoter Jean Bedard from Interbox are reportedly working on a three fight deal with Showtime to have Bute fight the best fighters in the super middleweight division in 2011. There still in the process of negotiating the contract, but hopefully it gets signed.
Bute will be perfect for Showtime, because the Super Six tournament was put together by that network. Bute unfortunately missed out on the tourney. However, he can still wind up fighting the best of the bunch in 2011, and hopefully the winner of the tournament will be one of the fighters that Bute hooks up with in 2011 for a fight.
HBO was interested in having Bute fight former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in 2011. However, that won’t be happening now. Pavlik was supposed to be fighting Bryan Vera in a comeback fight on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito bout on November 13th. But Pavlik injured his ribs and had to pull out of the card.
Bute plans on fighting in March 2011 against a still to be determined opponent. Bute is coming off of a 9th round TKO over Jesse Brinkley on October 15th. This was yet another dull opponent for Bute. Since capturing the IBF belt in 2007, Bute has defended it six times against the likes of Edison Miranda, Librado Andrade, Brinkley, William Joppy and Fulgencio Zuniga.
Bute hasn’t had any stars to fight or even opponents that are even slighting interesting. Andrade came the closest to being an interesting opponent, but that’s only because he appeared to knock Bute out in their first fight in 2008. Bute won the fight by a controversial manner when he was knocked down in the 12th, and then given extra time to get back up by the Canadian referee. Instead of giving Andrade an immediate rematch, a year went by before Bute fought Andrade again.
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