By Keith Idec
ATLANTIC CITY — Lucian Bute wants to fight the winner of the “Super Six World Boxing Classic.”
It looks like he’ll have to settle for facing the “Super Six” loser in his next fight. With Andre Ward clearly considering other options, Bute has made it known he also is very open to fighting England’s Carl Froch in his next bout.
“Maybe with Froch we can make a two-fight deal,” Bute suggested, “one in Nottingham, then one in Montreal, and then everyone’s happy. Right now, if he wants to have the chance of becoming a world champion again, he needs to fight me.”
Nottingham is Froch’s hometown, where the former WBC super middleweight champion defeated Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KOs) by split decision on opening night of the “Super Six” in October 2009. Bute (30-0, 24 KOs) is wildly popular in Montreal, the Romania native’s adopted hometown, and has regularly drawn large crowds to Bell Centre in Montreal and Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City.
Wherever it would take place, fighting Froch next is the preference of Bute and his handlers if they cannot land an immediate unification fight with Ward (25-0, 13 KOs), who won the “Super Six” and owns the WBA and WBC super middleweight titles.
“I think it will be tougher to make a fight with Ward than Froch,” said Jean Bedard, president of Interbox, Bute’s promoter. “For our fans in Canada, Carl Froch has been talking about Lucian for the last five years, so it’s very emotional for us.”
Ward was even pushing for a Bute-Froch fight during the post-fight press conference Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall.
“On the Bute thing, you know, I’m not obviously a promoter,” Ward said. “But that’s a tremendous fight for Carl, because I know Carl doesn’t like Bute.”
Froch (28-2, 20 KOs) would welcome a shot at Bute, the only top super middleweight who didn’t participate in the two-year, double-elimination “Super Six.”
“I would definitely take the fight with Bute, 100 percent,” Froch said. “That’s a fight I’d take.”
Froch did intimate, though, that he would like his next fight to occur in England, perhaps against a lesser opponent than he has encountered in each of his last seven bouts. In addition to five challenging “Super Six” fights against Ward, Glen Johnson, Arthur Abraham Mikkel Kessler and Dirrell, Froch defeated former middleweight champ Jermain Taylor and ex-light heavyweight champ Jean Pascal in his two bouts before the “Super Six” started.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com.
