By Tim Fletcher: The November 28th fight card headlined by IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale (21-1, 14 KOs) vs. Lucian Bute (32-2, 25 KOs) suffered a big blow on Tuesday with the reported injury of #1 IBF light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (9-0, 9 KOs) for their fight card at the Centre Videotron, Quebec City, in Quebec, Canada.
Beterbiev hurt his shoulder in training and has pulled out of the card. Beterbiev never had an opponent that was signed up for the fight, but it’s still a major buzz-kill not having him on the card. With Beterbiev now off the card, it leaves only the light heavyweight clash between Eleider Alvarez and Isaac Chilemba as the only interesting undercard fight on the card.
That’s a decent fight, but not a great one. Chilemba can’t punch, and he’s likely going to lose the fight. A better match-up would be Eleider Alvarez vs. Andrzej Fonfara or Sullivan Barrera.
Beterbiev will have surgery performed on his shoulder, and he’ll be out of action until 2016. The shoulder injury isn’t a bad one, but it’s bad enough to where he’ll need surgery.
For the boxing fans that were interested in seeing Beterbiev fight, it’s a great disappointment not having him on the card. The two time Russian Olympian has won over a lot of the Canadian boxing fans since he turned pro two years ago. With only nine fights under his belt, Beterbiev has caught a great deal of attention with his impressive knockouts.
“I am extremely frustrated and disappointed by the situation,” Beterbiev said to Fight News. “I was preparing myself hard to give another great show to the fans, November 28, but I will be back stronger in 2016.”
The DeGale-Bute fight will be an interesting one. Bute, 35, is trying to turn his career around after suffering losses to Carl Froch and Jean Pascal. Bute recently defeated Andrea Di Luisa by a 4th round knockout win last August. Bute looked good in that fight and showed that he still has something left at his age.
The only real question that remains about Bute is whether he can take a punch. He was blown out by Carl Froch in 2012 in losing by a 5th round knockout. In Bute’s fights since then against Denis Grachev, Pascal and Di Luisa, he’s looked gun-shy like he’s afraid to get hit hard by a shot. Bute cannot afford to fight like that against DeGale on November 28th because he’ll get blown out of he does.
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