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After suffering his first defeat as professional to now three-time world champion Carl Froch, Lucian Bute has stayed in Europe and travelled to his native Romania as he usually does after big fights. “Lucian needs time, he needs to regroup,” trainer Stephane Larouche told ********* Monday evening after touching down in Montreal. “He needs to sit down, to relax. How he will come back from this? We’ll see. He deserves the respect, we always win as a team and we lose as one as well.”
“Physically he’s perfect,” said Larouche of his fighter who required five stitches to close a cut above his eye. Other wounds suffered by the fighter will take considerably longer to heal. “He’s more heart-broken than anything else.”
The fight itself didn’t take long to go south. A highly charged and competitive first round had both fighters landing but Froch gaining the upper hand. “After the first round, we felt everything was still possible,” said Larouche. “According to me I thought we lost the first round but Lucian came in the corner and knew it was time to re-organize, regroup and step up; but unfortunately, he just stayed the same. This is where the fight turned around, Lucian should have been able to do things quicker, faster, better and he did not. Another good round for Froch and he hurt him in the second…he hurt him in the third…he hurt him in the fourth and I think we were done at that point. He was not recovering as much as he was trying. He didn’t quit, he wanted to go on. He was asking to go one more round, let me go one more. This is what I liked, he never quit.”
With a rematch clause in place between the two fighters, it is far too early with the glue still drying under and stitches still settling above the ex-champion’s left eye. “The question is when he will come back,” says Larouche who has trained Bute for his entire professional career. “It’s not about a rematch, it’s when he will come back, and he needs time right now. That type of loss, he’ll need time. He has a strong character, a strong personality, I know he’s a worker, if he recovers properly, it can propel him. This is the type of loss that if you can come back from this, it’s even greater as an achievement and we’ll see how he will handle it.”
The trainer knows that there are certainly no guarantees after a loss such as the one Bute suffered Saturday, but has seen his fighter regroup and come charging back before as he did in the second Andrade fight. “No two fighters react the same way. The good thing with Lucian is that it was not too long, it was five rounds which is not as long as a twelve round beating, but we’ll see. Nobody can tell me right now, nobody can say whether he can back as good as he is right now, I think he will, but there is no answer at this point. But in terms of the person he is, I know how dedicated he is, how much he loves the sport, how bad he felt that he felt let people down. He feels bad and he’s hard on himself, but this is part of the process of such a hard loss.”
Larouche also took note of some of the other Super-six participants and what they had to say, “I’ve seen the comments of different fighters and I’ve seen the class of Andre Ward and seen the no-class of Andre Dirrell. Ward is praising Froch while Dirrell is hitting at Lucian; this is why one guy is popular and no-one cares about the other.”
Larouche told ********* he had no intention appealing the fight on the technicality of promoter Eddie Hearn running into the ring prematurely. “We’re not the type to win that way, I had thought the fight was over and the referee had stopped the fight and I was going to Lucian and he’s suddenly counting and I said ‘That’s enough, thank you sir
“Physically he’s perfect,” said Larouche of his fighter who required five stitches to close a cut above his eye. Other wounds suffered by the fighter will take considerably longer to heal. “He’s more heart-broken than anything else.”
The fight itself didn’t take long to go south. A highly charged and competitive first round had both fighters landing but Froch gaining the upper hand. “After the first round, we felt everything was still possible,” said Larouche. “According to me I thought we lost the first round but Lucian came in the corner and knew it was time to re-organize, regroup and step up; but unfortunately, he just stayed the same. This is where the fight turned around, Lucian should have been able to do things quicker, faster, better and he did not. Another good round for Froch and he hurt him in the second…he hurt him in the third…he hurt him in the fourth and I think we were done at that point. He was not recovering as much as he was trying. He didn’t quit, he wanted to go on. He was asking to go one more round, let me go one more. This is what I liked, he never quit.”
With a rematch clause in place between the two fighters, it is far too early with the glue still drying under and stitches still settling above the ex-champion’s left eye. “The question is when he will come back,” says Larouche who has trained Bute for his entire professional career. “It’s not about a rematch, it’s when he will come back, and he needs time right now. That type of loss, he’ll need time. He has a strong character, a strong personality, I know he’s a worker, if he recovers properly, it can propel him. This is the type of loss that if you can come back from this, it’s even greater as an achievement and we’ll see how he will handle it.”
The trainer knows that there are certainly no guarantees after a loss such as the one Bute suffered Saturday, but has seen his fighter regroup and come charging back before as he did in the second Andrade fight. “No two fighters react the same way. The good thing with Lucian is that it was not too long, it was five rounds which is not as long as a twelve round beating, but we’ll see. Nobody can tell me right now, nobody can say whether he can back as good as he is right now, I think he will, but there is no answer at this point. But in terms of the person he is, I know how dedicated he is, how much he loves the sport, how bad he felt that he felt let people down. He feels bad and he’s hard on himself, but this is part of the process of such a hard loss.”
Larouche also took note of some of the other Super-six participants and what they had to say, “I’ve seen the comments of different fighters and I’ve seen the class of Andre Ward and seen the no-class of Andre Dirrell. Ward is praising Froch while Dirrell is hitting at Lucian; this is why one guy is popular and no-one cares about the other.”
Larouche told ********* he had no intention appealing the fight on the technicality of promoter Eddie Hearn running into the ring prematurely. “We’re not the type to win that way, I had thought the fight was over and the referee had stopped the fight and I was going to Lucian and he’s suddenly counting and I said ‘That’s enough, thank you sir
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