~~~The Lightning Lucian Bute Battleship~~~

How many hours to kick-off?

 

There is always very little publicity until there is only a few days left.

It will be all over the medias in the next couple of days. Don't worry.

Of course Carbo getting fired might take some air time off of boxing but that's Montreal for ya.

 

If I may, I'll try to answer to your questions, while we wait for Maxime to do it also.

People are not angry Bute didn't give an immediate rematch to Andrade.

Choko's gala is not selling well at all but of course, most people are choosing between the two events. True boxing fans only are buying tickets for Holt-Bradley.

You know Zuniga is a far better opponent than Joppy, and people from Montreal know it too (at least boxing fans).

Maybe people got disappointed from the fight against Andrade. Sure, the end of the fight left a bad taste. but for myself, I can't afford to go to Bell Center each time Bute fights. I prefer to buy good tickets once in a time than bad tickets every time. I was not there for the Joppy fight, I won't be for the Zuniga fight, even if I would love to.

It's probably a little bit of everything after all.

They didn't sell over 10 000 tickets yet but that doesn't mean they won't until Friday.

 

I think there was a hype after Bute became champion and that's the reason why 13 000 went to see Joppy while the fight was free on television. People would have bought any fighter (in fact they did). The
3 000 less people are in my opinion from the public in general, coming to see a fight because it's the talk of the town. Clearly, it's not like that this time. I'm pretty sure it will be like that for the rematch against Andrade. We get used to things in life and I think it will be more and more difficult to convince non boxing fans to come to the Centre Bell.

Avatar suspense: a friend of mine is supposed to send me a photo he took at the Bute-Andrade weight-in. I was there too. That will be my avatar, unless I can make it again this time. Of course, that would be a fresher avatar. It's coming!

 

What gymnastic competition was in Montreal(or in Canada recently)?
I saw a video on the sport.ro romanian channel in which Bute and Jojo Dan were st the competition.Lucian gave the gold medal to gold medal winner Razvan Selariu from the romanian team.
And he still looks big to me in those videos.....hop he makes weight.

 

I don't know if Bute and Larouche are lying about that but they seem sincere when they say it didn't affect Bute at all. Bute took Andrade best shots all fight long without a problem, except the 5th round, where he was shook a bit. But he was able to come back strong at the end of the round, so no big thing. It is very clear that it was the exhaustion that was responsible of the kd, not Andrade shots. Andrade himself was very tired and was not able to land a shot properly until the last one. Bute's chin is still excellent. If he has to be cautious, it won't be about his chin but about how he will manage his energies. Will he let his hands go?

Maxime pointed out a potentially overtraining issue for Bute's lack of energy at the end of the fight. Bute usually has an excellent stamina. Of course, Andrade is not a normal boxer, so being exhausted against him is quite normal. Mack was exhausted way before the 12th! Still, I do believe there was another problem. The way Bute lost everything was quite shocking for a fan. Yesterday, Bute told he trained differently in the last days to avoid to be tired at the end of the fight.

Anyway, the stamina issue is not there against Zuniga. After bika, Berrio and Andrade, I can't see how Zuniga could beat Bute. He's smaller than the three other guys, he doesn't hit harder than Berrio, he's not relentless as Andrade, not tricky as Bika. Zuniga said yesterday he knew how to counter Bute's speed. Let me doubt about it.

 

It's called Gymnix international, the biggest gym competition in Montreal. Bute gave the gold medal to a Romanian gymnast, then goes on the love story between Montreal and the Romanian gymnasts. Nadia Comaneci won her gold medals and her perfect scores here at the Olympic games. I'm sure that helped Bute to be accepted here in a way or another. We don't know much of the economic situation of Romania. We don't know much of the Ceaucescu reign. But we remember Nadia Comaneci. She was our Olympic games queen. Romania reminds very good thoughts.

 

:good
Yep,Nadia was and is a goddess.

 

For Bute's weight, he still is at 178 pounds and doesn't seem to feel a problem with it. Some day, a nutritionnist or an informed poster could explain to us how the dehydratation works in details.

 

Does Interbox have the same nutritionist/weight guy from back from the Dorin v Callist incident?