This was talked about a lot for a number of years...initially when they were both unbeaten foreign-import Montreal-based super middleweight prospects (2007-08), and then most fervently when Bute was the IBF champ and "Outsider" at 168lbs - viewed by many as the best man not in the Super-6 tourney and the man the winner of said tourney would need to beat to cement being 'the man' - with Adonis rising in the ranks, becoming the IBF number 2 ranked contender just a few months ahead of Bute losing the belt to his mandatory Carl Froch (2009-2012), and then decreasingly throughout parallel light heavyweight campaigns that saw Adonis reign with the green strap and Bute struggling to separate himself from the pack of contenders in the WBC rankings at 175, suffering a setback every time he took a step forward, all his bouts in this period for WBC trinkets (2013-2018). Now, with the sobriety of a few years having passed since both officially retired, and their diehard fanatics having probably vanished from the board or at least cooled off, we can maybe revisit this one. I still think, even now, shot to hell, in their forties, they could probably do big money at the box office trading on their previous star power. Maybe not set a Quebec gate record (Bute vs. Pascal drew in a crowd of 20,479 and netted each combatant a cool two million dollars...and Pascal was clearly second fiddle to Bute, with Adonis comfortably in third place behind this pair as far as drawing power at their respective peaks) but do better than it has any right to nonetheless. The handsome Romanian was as popular a star as ever there was in the province, while Adonis had that villainous appeal where you tuned in to see him finally lose - and both have the power and the vulnerability to make a KO either way a real possibility...something that wasn't as true in Bute vs. Pascal, with the other Haitian-born fighter boasting simultaneously far better punch resistance and far less thunderous one-hitter potential in his fists than Adonis. Common opponents: Badou Johannes Gabriel Jack lost to Bute via DQ12 in 2016, and fought to a 12 round majority draw with Adonis two years later. Sakio Bika lost to Bute via UD12 in 2007, and lost to Adonis via UD12 in 2015. *Jean-Thenistor Pascal defeated Adonis twice in 2003 in qualifiers for the Canada vs. USA meet, which in turn served as sort of an unofficial qualifier for the Olympics the following year (Pascal would represent the Canadian team at middleweight in Athens but was eliminated by Yordanis Despaigne in the Round-of-32) and defeated Bute via UD12 in the pros in 2014. So who takes it, then - 168 or 175lbs, pick your fittest and most effective version of either man. The one that inverted his given & surname to make himself marketable in the Anglosphere (bet you never realized his friends called him Stevenson and his mom is Mrs. Adonis, did ya ) or the one that had three separate monikers in three languages?
Stevenson by KO for sure, that straight left was fast and powerful,poor Dawson never saw it saw it coming, didn't even know what hit him until he went down and Bellend would get killed in there had the referee not stopped the fight. Assuming the fight happens at 175 Bute still gets stopped brutally.
That was Glass Jawson, Dawson would have given Stevenson a boxing lesson. Likewise CW Bellew vs. Stevenson would be a different fight. The power of the left was real, but he never stopped a good fighter in their prime with it.
The Stevenson/Dawson fight is a fight I use as an example of using feints to guage what your opponent sees. Stevenson feinted that left 3 times before he let it loose. You're correct, Dawson never saw it coming. He never reacted to the feints.
no he wasn't. he was the very definition of a paper champion. he stepped up once and got brutalised, much like how calzaghe dispelled the lacy myth.
Adonis Stevenson is still very much recovering from his concussions just the thought of him fighting again makes no sense whatsoever. Having seen both fight when Bute was entering his prime and Adonis was still a prospect I would lean towards Bute but knowing what we know about Stevenson post Dawson and Bute post Froch you'd expect Stevenson to knock Bute out.
It seems there's some retroactive underrating of Le Tombeur, and convenient omission from memory of just how fragile Adonis' mandible was... As for shorter-term memory, look how quickly everyone forgot that his name is actually Stevenson Adonis rather than "Adonis Stevenson", as revealed in my OP. We are talking memory loss here, right, not further confirmation that nobody ever reads past my titles and digests my entire mother****ing pearls to swine OP stuff, riiiiiiiight?
I can't see anything than a Stevenson KO there, unless Bute manages to land one of his body shots. But 9/10 times i'd take Stevenson to land big and Bute would shell up like he did against Froch.
