Bute vs. Pascal: 20,000 fans expected at Bell Centre on May 25th in Montreal, Canada

By Boxing News - 04/15/2013 - Comments

bute4543 - CopyBy Allan Fox: The May 25th fight between the top Canadians Lucian Bute (31-1, 24 KO’s) and Jean Pascal (27-2-1, 16 KO’s) is expected to draw a full house of 20,000 boxing fans for this fight at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, according to Montreal.ctvmnews.ca.

Despite both fighters have serious question marks hanging over their heads as to whether either of them will ever be relevant in the divisions they’re currently fighting in, the Canadian fans are expected to flock to the fight in high numbers to support their heroes.

Pascal said “We’re still in our prime and people want to see this fight, so the right time is now.”

There’s no doubt that this is the right time for the fight, but you can make a good argument that both guys have slipped a couple of notches and are on the downsides of their respective careers. Bute was destroyed in five rounds by Carl Froch last year in May in a fight where he never stood a chance from the very start of the fight.

Although Bute came back to win his next fight over Russian Denis Grachev last November in a 12 round unanimous decision victory in Montreal, Bute didn’t look good and barely won the fight on two of the judges’ scorecards.

Pascal, 30, has fought only once in the past year and a half and didn’t look good in beating Aleksy Kuziemski by a 10 round unanimous decision last December. One gets the sense that Pascal would still lose to 48-year-old Bernard Hopkins if the two were to fight for a third time. Pascal was beaten by Hopkins by a 12 round decision in May 2011, and he struggled to a 12 round draw against Hopkins in December 2010.

If Pascal can beat Bute next month then we’ll likely see Pascal fight the winner of the Chad Dawson vs. Adonis Stevenson bout for the WBC light heavyweight title.



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