By Scott Gilfoid: Carl Froch is now the mandatory challenger to IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, and is hoping to fight him in Nottingham, England rather than in Montreal, Canada, where Bute fights. Froch and his promoter Eddie Hearn are hoping that Bute will agree to fight Froch on May 5th in Nottingham.

It’s highly doubtful that Bute will want to fight in Nottingham once he takes a peak at what happened to the last visiting fighter that fought Froch in Nottingham. Andre Dirrell was that fight and he ended up losing the fight by a questionable 12 round split decision in a fight that Dirrell appeared to win by at least five rounds. It wasn’t even close. Do you think Bute will want to be the next guy that has that happen to him? No way, he’s not going to go for that.

If Froch does get Bute to come to Nottingham, I still think the outcome will be the same. Bute is all wrong for Froch because of his hit and retreat style of fighting and Froch is just too slow to compete with a fighter like that. The guys that can handle Bute are talents like Andre and Anthony Dirrell.

They have the hand speed, the foot speed and the one punch knockout power to make Bute look silly when he tries to land and run. Maybe that’s why Bute wants nothing to do with either of those guys. He’d rather face the slow as molasses Froch rather than guys that have the speed and power to catch up to him and knock him out. Froch needs to let the Dirrells take care of Bute. Forget about luring him to Nottingham or going to Montreal to fight him there. Froch will just lose and end up miserable for it. He’s better off facing Librado Andrade or one of the other lower level contenders.