By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (30-1, 24 KO’s) has done a great job in picking out a talented opponent in Denis Grachev (12-0, 8 KO’s) to fight next on November 3rd at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Grachev, a huge puncher, isn’t normally the kind of fighter that you would face if you were coming off of a hugely disappointing 5th round TKO loss to Carl Froch like Bute is.
Grachev, 30, is a bigger puncher than Froch and a lot more dangerous fight because of his one punch power and because of his ability to cut off the ring. It’s unfortunate that Bute, 32, feels that he needs to take a risky fight like this in order to win back fans that he lost as well as to get him ready for a rematch against Froch in 2013. If Bute loses to Grachev, then he can forget all about trying to avenge his loss to Froch because that fight will effectively be off the table.
With Grachev, you just never know what will happen with a power puncher like him swinging for the fences with every shot. Bute is the better fighter by far in terms of talent, but when you’re coming off of a bad knockout loss like the one he suffered against Froch, it’s a big risk to be facing someone with the kind of power that Grachev has. What makes it even worse for Bute is that Grachev knows that Bute was recently hurt, so he’s going to be likely punching even harder than he normally does knowing that all it might take is one big shot and he could have Bute out of there.
Bute is showing a ton of balls by taking on this big hitting Russian because few other fighters would be willing to take a risk like that under a similar circumstance.
Grachev is coming off of an 8th round TKO win over light heavyweight contender Ismayl Sillakh last April. Grachev kept stalking Sillakh all fight long while getting out-boxed until he finally caught up to him and took him out with a series of hard shots in the 8th.
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