By Chris Williams: On paper this fight appears to be an ugly mismatch with the unbeaten IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (27-0, 22 KO’s) facing the 35-year-old Brian Magee (34-3-1, 24 KO’s) on March 19th at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Magee has good basic skills but nothing really that stands out about his game. He’s not a big puncher, he’s not very fast and he doesn’t have great foot work.

His record is filled with fluff European level fighters that aren’t world class, yet the IBF has Magee ranked at number #8, high enough for Bute to take the fight. His impressive looking record looks good to casual boxing fans who don’t have much knowledge about how Magee built his record.

Okay, so Magee doesn’t have a very good chance at beating Bute and pulling off a huge upset. However, he does have a small chance if he can take a page from the playbook used by Librado Andrade in his first fight with Bute in 2008. Andrade used pressure to wear down Bute and then score a knockdown in the 12th. Bute should have been counted out because it took him ions to get up from the knockdown, but the Canadian referee put his concentration on Andrade for some reason instead of giving the count to the downed Bute.

At any rate, Magee has to pressure Bute the whole time and look to land hard shots to his vulnerable chin. Bute has great skills, excellent power and a frustrating hit and run style of fighting, but he doesn’t have a great chin. If you doubt that, take a look at Bute’s knockout loss to Gennady Golovkin on Youtube or take another look at his long count win over Andrade from 2008. You’ll see that Bute does well until he’s hit really hard on the chin. If you tag him hard, he’ll fold like a cheap suit. But Magee has got to really load up and go for broke if he wants the win because you can’t beat Bute unless you’re willing to get hit a lot.