Lucian Bute’s team talks about a potential Kelly Pavlik fight
Lucian Bute’s team has opened up about the prospect of fighting former WBC and WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik.
Bute, the IBF middleweight champion, easily trumped challenger Jesse Brinkley this weekend at the Bell Centre in Montreal, proving once again he deserves his Ring Magazine rating as the number one super
middleweight in the world.
Brinkley fought a courageous fight but was simply overmatched from the start, failing to connect with any notable shots and being kept at a distance against the sharpshooting Bute. He crumbled to the
canvas from a body shot in the fifth, and was down again in the eight before the flame went out in the ninth.
InterBox president Jean Bedard, in light of the victory, said early Saturday morning at a press conference that the plan is to have Bute take on Pavlik in March. The fight would be notably high-profile
for Bute, who has been forced to fight second-string fighters while much of the best talent is tied up in the Showtime Super Six middleweight tournament.
At this point negotiations remain contingent on Pavlik (36-2, 32 KOs) defeating Bryan Vera (17-5, 11 KOs) 13 November on the Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito undercard, which will be featured on HBO pay-per-view.
Pavlik will be heavily favoured for that bout.
Bedard said that they had hoped to match Bute against Pavlik earlier, but that the fight had been abandoned after Pavlik lost to Sergio Martinez in April.
“Our plan was, after April [17] we were supposed to fight Pavlik, but he lost against Martinez. Pavlik] has got a fight in November, but that is our plan, to do a fight in March, probably here at the
Bell Centre, probably with HBO. And they would love to have a fight with Lucian and Pavlik.”
Bute’s team said they would negotiate the fight at no less than a catchweight of 166 pounds. Bute, a super middleweight, fights in a division that caps at 168 pounds. Pavlik has fought as a middleweight
(160 pounds) for all but two of his bouts.
Following his defeat to Martinez at the middleweight level, Pavlik’s team voiced concerns with making weight, suggesting that a bout with Bute would be satisfactory because it would mean going up in weight
for Pavlik.
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