By Scott Gilfoid: American super middleweight talent Andre Dirrell (20-1, 14 KO’s) wants no part of traveling to Canada to possibly find himself on the receiving end up a questionable decision against Canada’s top fighter IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (30-0, 24 KO’s).

Dirrell, 28, is very interested in fighting Bute, but only if he travels to a neutral venue to fight him. The neutral venue would be one that they both agreed on rather than one decided unilaterally.

Dirrell told boxingtalk.com “It [Dirrell fighting in Canada] is non-negotiable…it’s because of Canada. They will rob you whenever…I want a fair fight on mutual ground…I am not saying come to my backyard, but we can go to California and do it.”

Dirrell is American but he’s from Flint, Michigan and likely has very few fans in California. It would be like Dirrell is fighting in a foreign country. But I don’t think for a second that Bute would agree to fight a talent like Dirrell outside of Canada, and that’s too bad because it means they will never fight. Dirrell isn’t stupid enough to go to Canada and end up getting jobbed like Librado Andrade did when he made the mistake of fighting Bute there.

Andrade had Bute on the canvas in the 12th round in their October 2008 fight, but then referee spent a great deal of time warning Andrade to go to the neutral corner. Bute was eventually able to get back to his feet while the referee wasted time on the Andrade warning. That right there has stuck in the minds of a lot of fighters and boxing fans when they think of Bute and Canada.

It’s on Bute. I know he’s got a good thing going there in Canada because he can fight anyone, and I mean anyone, and the Canadian fans pack the arena in the thousands. Bute probably won’t want to give up on that cash and by staying in Canada, he’ll be stuck facing only the guys that are willing to fight him there and take a big risk that they don’t end up like Andrade. Andre Ward won’t do it, Dirrell won’t do it and it sure looks like Carl Froch won’t do it either. If Bute wants the Ward fight, then he’s going to have to come out of Canada and take on a talent like Dirrell or one of the other good super middleweight contenders.