Bute and Pascal on target at weigh-in

By Bill Phanco - 01/17/2014 - Comments

Former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (31-1, 24 KO’s) and Jean Pascal (28-2-1, 17 KO’s) both successfully weighed in on Friday for their clash tomorrow night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Bute, who is coming of lackluster 12 round decision win over Denis Grachev over a year ago, weighed in at 173.6 lbs. For his part, the 31-year-old Pascal weighed in right at the limit at 175 lbs.

This was a fight that was really looked forward to for many years in Canada, but due to Pascal’s loss to Bernard Hopkins, and Bute’s defeat at the hands of Carl Froch, a lot of the excitement that would have been there for this fight has been lost. The fight is basically 3 years too late. Pascal has become a part-time fighter who rarely fights nowadays, and he hasn’t taken on a good opponent in 3 years since his loss to Bernard Hopkins. Bute was kind of exposed in the Froch fight in terms of his chin.

Bute had always been considered a good fighter, and very dangerous puncher. But ever since his controversial win over Librado Andrade in their first fight in 2008, Bute has looked like a knockout waiting to happen. The fact that he was able to go another 4 years before he was stopped by Froch is probably more a product of the soft match-making that was done for Bute than an indication that he had a first class chin.

The Bute-Pascal fight will take place at 175. Pascal, 31, has wanted this fight for some time and now he finally has the fight. It’s just too bad that the fight didn’t come for him when he was still a relevant fighter in the light heavyweight division, because it’s been such a long time since he was in a good fight. Pascal has had injury problems that has kept him out of the ring, and when he has fought, he’s been matched lightly.

Bute is still trying to find his way back to where he was previous to his loss to Carl Froch. Pascal is a little younger than the 33-year-old Bute at 31, but Bute is definitely the better puncher of the two. Pascal can potentially punch hard, but he has a bad habit of slapping with an open glove when he throws punches, and this robs him of his power. He’s not changed this habit since he first turned pro, so it’s unreasonable to assume that he’ll suddenly start punching with better form on Saturday.

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In the co feature bout, heavyweight Mike Perez will be fighting Carlos Takam. Perez weighed in at 231.2 lbs, and Takam at 256.2 lbs.