By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (31-1, 24 KO’s) has reportedly had surgery on his left eyebrow to clean up some excess scar tissue that he had in the areas, according to fightnews.com.
The talented 32-year-old Bute should be ready to go by May 25th to take on the winner of the February 16th clash between Nikola Sjekloca and Sakio Bika for the vacant WBC super middleweight title lifted from champion Andre Ward by the World Boxing Council.
Bute wants the WBC 168 pound title so that when he faces his former conqueror IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch later on this year, he’ll have the WBC title in his possession. That’ll make the fight a unification bout at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada, and it’ll give the soon to be 33-year-old Bute more bargaining position during the negotiation stage of the fight.
Bute will be helped out immensely if Froch gets spanked by WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler in his rematch with Froch on May 25th. A loss to Kessler will take a lot of hot air out of Froch, and likely leave him in a desperate position when he faces Bute later in this year. It’ll be a lot like the situation Froch was in when he faced Bute last year in May in their fight in Nottingham, England.
Froch came into the fight having lost his last fight against Andre Ward in the Super Six finals in December 2011, and Froch was in a must-win situation against Bute. A loss to Bute likely would have put Froch spiraling downward career-wise. But Froch caught Bute not fully prepared mentally for their fight because he reacted badly when it became clear that Froch was the stronger fighter in the trenches.
Instead of regrouping and going back to his superior boxing technique to box circles around Froch much in the same way that Andre Dirrell did in his fight with Froch, Bute instead decided to go out on his shield by slugging it out with him until getting stopped in the 5th. That likely won’t happen again in a rematch because Bute realizes now the mistakes that he made in that fight and he’s not going to repeat them a second time.
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