By Dan Amrbrose: Former two time super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (43-2, 32 KO’s) was at ringside at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada on Saturday night to watch IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (28-0, 23 KO’s) defend his title against Ireland’s Brian Magee (34-4-1, 24 KO’s) and noticed some flaws in Bute’s game that he thinks he can exploit. Kessler wants to fight Bute after taking a tune-up bout. Bute ended stopping the #5 ranked IBF challenger Magee in the 10th after knocking him down several times in the fight. Bute did his best work with body shots and uppercuts. Those seemed to be his main weapons all throughout the fight.
Kessler said this about Bute in an interview at fightnews.com: “He got hit a lot by the left hand.”
Indeed, Bute got hit a lot by left hands but he was also getting tagged by a lot of rights as well. It wasn’t a big deal because Magee was the perfect opponent for Bute – a fighter that can’t punch and is slow. Bute had nothing to worry about in this fight, but he did get hit an awful lot. Bute didn’t look as strong as he used to in the past and his movement wasn’t as quick as it used to be. It could be that Bute is starting to show his age or perhaps he had problems making weight and this left him weak.
Bute’s jab – or lack of one – will be a problem against Kessler. Bute’s jabs against Magee looked more like slow backhands which lacked any kind of power or snap. Much of the time Bute seemed to be waiting on throwing the left uppercut and body shots and often was cocked waiting for Magee to get close enough for Bute to throw the shots. It was like watching former heavyweight contender Donavan “Razor” Ruddock, whose main weapon was a powerful right hand uppercut that was called the “smash.” However, Ruddock was vulnerable to getting hit with a right hand lead because of the way he would tip off when he was about to throw an uppercut. Bute looks to be just as vulnerable. Kessler could take advantage of his by nailing Bute each time he cocks his left to get ready to throw his uppercuts. Bute is pretty much one-dimensional nowadays. He’s become too reliant on the uppercut and that’s going to make him vulnerable against Kessler and the better fighters in the Super Six tournament.
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