Where in the world is Lucian Bute?
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Can you picture what I'm picturing - it's the year 1930 and the Irish World Champ, known as the people's champ, is fighting his hardest challenge yet. You are only a boy of 5 and your grandpa is sitting right next to the radio sharply attentive to the announcers voice. The Irish champ is starting to make a come back from a brutal beating, your grandpa stands up cheering passionately. The announcer proclaims he lands with a left, a right, another right - The Challenger is wobbling! Grandpa starts shadow boxing around the room when suddenly the People's champ wins by knockout and your grandpa picks you up and joyfully throws you in the air!!
So in reality, this snippet into a New York apartment in the 1930's has nothing to do with Lucian Bute. In fact, Bute is a Romanian boxer who fights out of Canada. But to me, Bute embodies everything of what I like to envision as the 1930's peoples' champ. He is slick, fast, strong, and he even fights in a stance similar to the FireStone Boxing bear.
As I watched the rise of Lucian, I could only hope he would take on the winner of the Super 6 tournament and annihilate them with his thunderous shot to the liver like he does with a good number of his foes. Unfortunately, he was matched up against the 2nd place fighter of the Super 6 - Carl Froch - The English brawler who actually reminds me of the challenger in my allegorical intro story to this article. Even more unfortunately, Lucian did not take down Froch like the Irish people's champ in the story above. Froch man handled him, he simply over powered him.
Lucian has been one of my favorites for a long time. Like when Pacquiao was viciously knocked out by Marquez, when Bute was knocked down and out by Froch, something inside of me felt forever lost. I asked myself what is next for Bute.
His next fight is against Jean Pascal, who physically resembles the strength of an ox. The man is very powerful, but Hopkins got the better of him. If Lucian can be smooth, box, and keep Pascal at a distance, I think his career has a shot to get back on the right track. I only hope he didn't bite off more than he can chew with this one.