By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute revealed his reasoning for choosing the recently beaten former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch to fight rather than an arguably more deserving opponent like Anthony Dirrell, saying he wants to take on the best fighters in the super middleweight division in order to prove himself.

It seems like a backwards approach to proving himself if you ask me. Froch just got spanked by Andre Ward, so he should be eliminated from the list for that reason alone.

Bute said to Sky Sports News “It’s my goal to fight the best boxers in the Super middleweight division. Carl Froch belongs in the elite of the super middleweight division and it will be a great victory. I am very confident and it will not faze me fighting in enemy territory.Supporters of Carl Froch will live their greatest disappointment.”

It’s not going to be that big of a disappointment to Froch’s fans to see him get beat again, because by now they’re well used to seeing Froch get beaten. He already tasted the bitter fruit of defeat against Mikkel Kessler, Ward and should have tasted it against Andre Dirrell if the judges had scored the fight the way I saw it. Let’s look at Froch’s record against the elite of the super middleweight division. He beat 42-year-old Glen Johnson, 5’9″ Arthur Abraham, Dirrell by a controversial 12 round split decision at home in Nottingham, and Jermain Taylor by knockout in the last seconds of a fight that Froch was set to lose. Froch then he got beat by Andre Ward. In 2008, Froch beat then super middleweight Jean Pascal. So, Froch’s record against world class opposition is 5-2, but you have to see the Dirrell fight as one that could easily be considered a loss because Dirrell did the better work in the fight by far in my estimation.

Bute really should have chosen someone else for his next fight instead of Froch. Here’s the guys that I feel that Bute should be fighting in order to prove himself worthy of a fight against Ward:

* Andre Dirrell
* Anthony Dirrell
* Mikkel Kessler
* Adonis Stevenson
* Robert Stieglitz