By Scott Gilfoid: The May 26th fight between IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (30-0, 24 KO’s) and former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) will be shown on Sky Sports HD at the Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, UK.

Froch no doubt is pleased about this, but this could be a double-edged sward for him because it means that more boxing fans will see the fight from his home country and if he things go badly for the 34-year-old Froch, as they did in his loss to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward in his last fight, then more people will see it live.

Maybe it’s better if less people see it because it might not quite as bad for Froch. I mean, I don’t like Froch’s chances of winning this fight, so maybe it’s better if the fight was televised one of the obscure pay per view channels where not as many people will be willing to watch because of the cash they’ll have to plunk down first.

Bute was kind of forced to face a decent fighter after being spoon fed during his entire time as the IBF champion. It’s sad to see a champion of five years still not having faced a live threat. This will be the 32-year-old Bute’s 10th title defense, but his first real fight. That’s actually pathetic if you ask me. It’s hard to say why Bute’s promoter didn’t put him in with a talented fighter all these years, but you have to think it wasn’t by accident that he has been matched so incredibly carefully all this time.

Even now, Bute had the opportunities to face one of the Dirrell brothers and instead his promoter put him in with Froch, who is coming off of a loss to Ward. Why Froch rather than the Dirrell brothers? Well, for starters Froch is slow and kind of a plodder compared the fast moving Dirrell brothers. Froch doesn’t have the hand speed that the Dirrell brothers or the one-punch power. He also doesn’t have the great defensive skills that they do. This is probably why one of the Dirrell brothers wasn’t chosen. Andre Ward made it clear that for Bute to fight him he’s got to fight a live body, so instead he faces Froch. It’s a classic move by Bute and his promoter and I wouldn’t have expected them to depart from the kinds of match-making they’ve done in the past. Picking Froch goes with the norm for them. If they would have chosen one of the Dirrell brothers, I’d have gone into shock because it would be so unlike them.