I feel Butler lucky not to fight Inoue. That would be massacre. Tete good but former Japan champion Kino****a put up better fight and Kino****a was poor Japan champ.
Butler was dominated from start to finish, it was the sort of defeat that will take a while to get over. I have to say The advice from the corner was awful from start to finish, too many instructions and contradictions. Near the end the only advice Butler got was "be nasty" and I also heard "bully him", the young man was starting to get worked over and "be nasty" was not helping. Butler could bounce back after a rest and maybe a change of trainer.
I'd be interested to see what a trainer has to say on who has the responsibility to arrange sparring partners and how difficult it is to get some quality sparring for a world title fight. If it was a case of Butler himself not wanting to pay for quality sparring then something is wrong with him, if it was a case of his team not being able to arrange it then something is seriously wrong with them. Either way looks like things need to change for Paul Butler.
I'm not sure if I'm being fair or not, but is there much in terms of sparrign partners at the weight for Paul in EUROPE? I know when Inoue was preparing to fight Narvaez he was sparring with Malcolm Tunacao and Ryosuke Iwasa. Likewise Iwasa was sparring was Shingo Wake and Shohei Omori ahead of his last fight (before Sergio Perales dropped out). That, to me, is top level sparring against southpaw fighters in and around the weights. For my money a guy like Paul, and Yafai, need to spend something on getting themselves over to the Ohashi Gym (Matsumoto, Inoue) Celes gym (Iwasa) or Shinsei gym (Tunacao) and get that elite level sparring in the lower weights. The guys like that simply aren't available in the UK. Obviously it'll cost money and that may be why they've not been doing it, but it'll be a great long term investment.
At 26 of course he can come again but this would suggest he wasn't as good as many would have had us believe.
Like i say he had some very good sparring lined up but his camp were too tight to pay for it, ultimately they paid with the first loss on their record.
I think this fight was a little too soon for him. I think he's been fasttracked and pushed too far without a lot of studying been done on his opponents especially Zolani Tete.
It looked like this was the first time Butler even saw a rangy southpaw, much less actually fight one. He had nothing, absolutely nothing for Zolani. Wasnt even competitive...very poor display
The quality of sparring was not the reason Butler lost. That Tete would have beaten any super fly out there - always out of reach, accurate, hard punching, controlled distance well. The finest sparring partners money could buy do not change this.
Paul paid for quality sparring! Lets not take away the fact that Tete is a top class champion and Paul tried to make a bit of history but came up short that night to a top championship fighter but he still has time to do that! A lot of boxers and there team try and put an excuse down to a loss when in fact rather than slating the fighter that lost dont you think you should be praising the champion for his skill! Butler will definitely come again, he thought a top class world champion. Tete has been stopped before but shown his metal to come back and so will Paul!
Well said but tbh thats as one sided a fight as ive ever saw in my life ,Asides Hall which you could have called either way i think Paul was hyped up with a pretty straight forward record he was beating guys who were there infront of him to get beaten
It's pretty simple really. Hall and tete are too big for him! He'll do fine against guys his own size. :thumbsup