By Sean McDaniel: IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (27-0, 22 KO’s) has another soft opponent on his hands for his next fight against Brian Magee (34-3-1, 24 KO’s) on March 19th at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. For Bute, 30, this is his 7th consecutive weak opponent since capturing the International Boxing Federation title three years ago with an 11th round TKO win in October 2007. Bute has done little since then other than being knocked out by Librado Andrade but then receiving a long count by Canadian referee Marlon Wright to survive the knockout and win the fight by a 12 round decision.

Bute also has beaten Andrade in the rematch, Edison Miranda, an old William Joppy, a former middleweight in Fulfencion Zuniga and recently a badly undersized and over-matched Jesse Brinkley in his last fight in October 2010. Magee is ranked #2 WBA, #2 WBC and #WBO. But forget about the ranking, Magee is more like a bottom 20 guy than anything resembling a top two fighter in any one division.

This is why I hate the silly rankings by the sanctioning bodies. Most of the time they get it wrong and have totally inept fighters with ridiculous rankings like Magee. Bute is going to win this fight and win it with ease. However, fighting all these stiffs one after another has got to have a negative effect on Bute, because he’s not fighting anyone with any real skills and this is going to come back to haunt Bute when he’s forced to fight a good super middleweight like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Glen Johnson or even light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins.