There are a lot of questions that will be answered tonight in the Canadian battle between Lucian Bute (31-1, 24 KO’s) and Jean Pascal (28-2-1, 17 KO’s) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. The first question is whether Bute will be able to stand up to Pascal’s power. He’s not a huge puncher, but he can definitely cause his opponents problems if they don’t have a strong chin.
Bute’s knockout loss to Carl Froch has to make you question whether he has the punch resistance needed to beat another quality fighter.
For most of his career, Bute has been able to get by largely on the match-making that’s been done for him. Bute never had to fight anyone really good until late in his career when he fought Froch. We found out in that fight that Bute’s chin isn’t good enough for him to beat an A level fighter. However, Bute’s offense is good that it might enable him to get past this test tonight, because for Pascal to get to Bute, he’s going to have to take some major risks. Pascal has a good chin, but it’s hard to say what’ll happen if he gets hit hard to the body by Bute.
“You’ll see Saturday night if I have a chin or not, but I’m very confident,” Bute said to theglobe. “In England with Carl Froch, I got hit a lot and I never went down. I never took a knee and I don’t plan to this time either.”
Bute may not have been gone down in the Froch fight, but he was close to going down in the 5th. Bute was useless in the fight from the 1st round, because it was immediately clear that Froch had way too much power for him. Instead of using movement to keep out of the way of Froch’s hard shots, Bute went to the ropes and tried to counter him. That didn’t work well for Bute, because just got overwhelmed with punches and taken out.
Pascal is capable of throwing a lot of shots when he thinks he’s got someone hurt. Bute will need to stay on the move and not stop like he did in the Froch fight, because Pascal will obliterate him in a hurry if he can stun him with something.