By Eric Thomas: It’s been four years since IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (27-0, 22 KO’s) captured the International Boxing Federation title with a win over Alejandro Berrio, and boxing fans are still waiting for the 30-year-old Bute to take on an interesting and exciting opponent. Bute has seemed content just to do the minimum when defending his IBF title rather than looking to go after interesting match-ups against the likes of Kelly Pavlik, Felix Sturm, Sergio Martinez, Andre Ward and Carl Froch.

On March 19th, boxing fans will see more of the same dull title defenses that Bute has been doing in the past when he takes on 35-year-old Brian Magee (34-3-1, 24 KO’s) in a 12 round bout at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Magee’s record might look impressive at first glance, but it’s filled with fluff and not top tier fighters with name recognition. Magee is the EBU super middleweight champion, and has fought largely Euro level opponents his entire career and not world class opposition.

Ranked #8 by the IBF, Magee would be more at home in the bottom 20, if that. Bute reached down to the #8 spot to pick out this soft touch instead of taking on a much more dangerous threat with Jean Paul Mendy, the current #1 ranked contender in the IBF.

The good thing is that more and more Super Six tournament fighters are being weeded out of the tourney and hopefully one of them will look to take on Bute, so that we can finally see Bute in with a live opponent after all these years. As it is, Bute should already have lost his title to Librado Andrade in their first fight in October 2008, when Bute was dropped in the 12th but was given a long count by the Canadian referee. Bute should have been counted out in that fight and/or stopped when he got up and couldn’t stand without leaning against the ropes for support.