By Scott Gilfoid: Well, it looks like SHOWTIME isn’t the only U.S cable television network that isn’t interested in televising the Carl Froch vs. Lucian Bute bout. HBO also has no interest in showing this fight to U.S fans, according to Dan Rafael at ESPN.
Rafael said this: “The network [Showtime] isn’t interested in the Bute-Froch fight, going so far as to give him [Bute] permission to shop the bout elsewhere, including HBO, which was also no interested.”
Ouch! I can’t say I blame HBO for not being interested in the Froch vs. Bute fight, because Froch just got beat, and who wants to see him get beat again by the Canadian based Bute, whose best best opponent during his entire career is 42-year-old Glen Johnson.
IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute is stubbornly still interested in facing the recently beaten Froch rather than someone that’s winning like Andre Dirrell. It’s disappointing because it means that neither HBO nor Showtime will be televising Bute’s next fight in the U.S as long as he’s committed to fighting Froch.
Bute and his promoter InterBox were hoping that Showtime would be up for televising his hoped for next fight against Froch, but they’ve been met with a cold shoulder from Showtime. The problem here is that there’s no real interest from American boxing fans to see Froch face Bute due to Froch’s one-side 12 round decision loss to Andre Ward last December.
When a fighter loses as bad as Froch did against Ward, American boxing fans aren’t thrilled at seeing that fighter in a title fight in his next bout. If Showtime was to televise the Bute-Froch fight, it would be the equivalent of them shoving Froch down the throats of U.S fans. Would British boxing fans like to see an American fighter televised in the UK if he were coming off of a one-sided loss like Froch did? I think not. I think the Brits would be up in arms if they had to sit and watch a guy that was just spanked fighting for a world title and being televised in Britain. They’d probably ignore the fight big time.
Canadians don’t seem to mind who Bute fights. They’ll watch on television in high numbers regardless because Bute is such a huge name over there. However, in the U.S, boxing fans are a lot more demanding and they don’t go for seeing guys fighting for titles after they’ve been whipped as bad as Froch did. As such, you see the cable giants – HBO and Showtime – saying no to Froch vs. Bute. If Bute and his promoters were smart, they’d forget about the Froch fight and look to put together the bout against Andre Dirrell or his brother Anthony Dirrell. Those are fights that American boxing fans would love to see and would tune in to watch in massive numbers.
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