By Dan Ambrose: Photo credit Tom Casino/Showtime – Former super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (43-2, 32 KO’s) doesn’t care if he has to travel to Canada to fight IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (28-3, 23 KO’s) in his own how town in order to get a fight against him. Kessler, 32, just wants a fight with Bute, and has spotted areas of vulnerability that he feels that he can exploit in the ring when/if they fight.

Kessler had this to say about Bute last Saturday night while watching him beat a badly over-matched Brian Magee in Montreal: “Bute can have his hometown. I’ll kick his ass anywhere.”

Kessler might want to re-think that if he were to have seen Bute’s fight with Librado Andrade in 2008. That fight took place in Canada and Bute appeared to be knocked out in the 12th after being flattened by a series of hard right hands from Andrade. However, the referee allowed Bute a lot of time to get up from the knockdown because of the referee’s focus on telling Andrade to go back to the neutral corner. It was like watching a replay of the long count between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Kessler previously dominated Andrade, beating him by a one-sided 12 round in March 2007.

You can make an argument that Kessler isn’t quite the same fighter he was back then, but he’s close enough to give Bute all he can handle. Bute is going to have to come up with a better game plan than to hit and run, and throw uppercuts. It takes more than that to beat Kessler because he applies a lot of pressure and has good power. Bute’s chin is going to be tested in this one.