Bute has to be careful against Mendy on Saturday night

By Boxing News - 07/08/2011 - Comments

By Eric Thomas: International Boxing Federation (IBF) super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (28-0, 23 KO’s) defends his title against what is likely the weakest opponent that he’s faced in the past four years that he’d held the International Boxing Federation title when he takes on unbeaten Jean Paul Mendy (29-0-1, 16 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Romexpo, in Bucharest, Romania.

You can completely ignore the 37-year-old Mendy’s career record and see him instead as fighter with a record close to 1-0, because Mendy has fought only one really good fighter (Sakio Bika) during his 11 year pro career and won that fight by a disqualification after Bika had Mendy on his knees after knocking him down. Bika unfortunately landed a right hand while Mendy was defenseless on his way down to the canvas.

Bute has to be careful with Mendy because if Mendy goes down in the 1st or 2nd round, which is what I see happening, Bute has to avoid hitting Mendy while he’s on his knees or else he’ll end up being disqualified as well. But seriously, this fight is a joke. Mendy, in my view, is the worst number #1 contender I’ve seen before and has no business fighting for a title against a guy like Bute.

This is going to be a terrible mismatch, and much worse than Bute’s mismatches against guys like Fulgencio Zuniga, William Joppy, Edison Miranda and Brian Magee. This tells you how bad the division is when you get away from the Super Six tournament creme of the crop fighters. The division isn’t solid through and through. There are about five or six good fighters with the rest being pretty awful. I include Mendy in the awful category and Bute needs to make sure he doesn’t tag the guy while he’s slowly heading towards the canvas after being knocked out or else we’ll have another disqualification victory for Mendy.



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