By Jason Kim: International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (26-0, 21 KO’s) will be making his sixth defense of his IBF super middleweight strap on October 15th against American Jesse Brinkley (35-5, 22 KO’s) at the Bell centre, in Montreal, Canada. This is one of those interesting fights where you have a champion, who is considered by many boxing fans to be the best in the entire division, facing a guy that pretty much no one is giving any chance in this fight.

I’m just wondering what Brinkley did to get ranked number #2 in the IBF super middleweight division and to land this title fight. I don’t see any impressive wins on Brinkley’s resume, unless you count a 12 round decision over Curtis Stevens. That’s the fight that the 33-year-old Brinkley won in January to get the shot against Bute. I’ve seen Brinkley’s fights against Robin Reid, Joe Spina, Sergio Mora and Alfonso Gomez, and I can’t say I was very impressed with what I saw of Brinkley in those bouts. He lost all of them, by the way.

I think Bute is going to do a number on Brinkley and likely score yet another knockout. Bute isn’t a real knockout puncher, but his opposition has been so bad recently that he keeps knocking them out one after another. We may not see Bute really challenged until some of the losers from the Super Six tournament start peeling off and becoming available for Bute to fight them. I’m hoping Bute takes that course and starts fighting whoever is available. Unfortunately, he can’t fight Jermain Taylor and Mikkel Kessler because both of those guys aren’t fighting anyone right now, but in the near future we may have guys like Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Andre Dirrell or Andre Ward available for Bute to take on.

Those are the kinds of fighters that Bute needs to be in with now. In the past two years, Bute has fought William Joppy, Librado Andrade (twice), Fulgencio Zuniga, and Edison Miranda. Those are decent fighters, but I see all of those guys losing to any of the Super Six tournament fighters. This is why it’s so hard to see how good Bute is, because his opposition just hasn’t been very strong in the past couple of years. And this fighting style, in which he uses a lot of hitting and running, doesn’t look like it’s any better than the other fighters in the Super Six tournament. I actually see Bute looking worse than those fighters. He needs to start showing me something by taking on better opposition because right now I don’t know that I believe that he’s best fighter in the division.