By Keith Idec
Unlike David Haye, you won’t hear Lucian Bute make any toe-related excuses if he loses Saturday night to Carl Froch.
The right big toe infection that disrupted Bute’s training camp last month has healed, according to Bute and trainer Stephan Larouche, and won’t affect the undefeated southpaw from Montreal when defends his IBF super middleweight title against Froch (28-2, 20 KOs) in Nottingham, England, Froch’s hometown. If the infection continued to be an issue, Bute (30-0, 24 KOs) and Larouche said they would’ve postponed the scheduled 12-round fight because Bute has entirely too much to lose.
There was a time, though, when that seemed like a distinct possibility, especially as rumors swirled regarding the severity of Bute’s infection.
“Lucian had two blisters [on his] big toe and one [was on the top],” Larouche said. “Lucian kept telling me, ‘I’m having a little bit more pain in this one.’ And I kept telling him, ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world,’ until one day he had some blood coming out of it, and the blood was not nice colors.
“So we led him to the doctors. The doctors said had he not come to see [them], you’re going to lose your toe. It’s a major infection and the infection was up to the ankle, not up to the knee [as reported elsewhere]. I read about a few things, about he was almost losing his leg. But it was his big toe, and so we finally went on the antibiotic for 10 days. And so far, everything had disappeared. He has no more infection. We cannot even see it no more, so he’s bouncing as he used to. [He’s got] perfect feet right now, and it’s not going to be a [story].”
The Bute-Froch fight will be broadcast by EPIX in the United States, beginning at 6 p.m. EDT/3 p.m. PDT.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com.
