Who should Bute have fought?

I've been reading on threads for a while that Bute is soft or protected or unproven or whatever. My question is who should he have fought? Who could he have beaten for everyone to have considered at the top of the division? Keep in mind that he wasn't invited to the Super 6.

It's a little too after the fact to worry about whom he should have fought. The fact is, for what ever reason, he was left out of the Super 6, which actually helped Bute. If he had to fight those guys, he'd be a mess right now. Let's hope he fights one of them soon.

i defended bute and said that he fought about the best competition that he could have not being included in the super 6.

flapanther2001 wrote:It's a little too after the fact to worry about whom he should have fought. The fact is, for what ever reason, he was left out of the Super 6, which actually helped Bute. If he had to fight those guys, he'd be a mess right now. Let's hope he fights one of them soon.

Agreed.

So now we give fighters hypothetical losses now.

SlickMoney wrote:So now we give fighters hypothetical losses now.

of course. just like we give floyd hypothetical wins.

SlickMoney wrote:So now we give fighters hypothetical losses now.

Not hypothetical losses, but he wouldn't be sitting on top of the world, with people arguing about how good he is if he had to fight the Super 6 guys. He'd be banged up more than he is now just considering the level of competition. Hell, guys with better resume's than Bute didn't last in the Super 6.

Gumby wrote:I've been reading on threads for a while that Bute is soft or protected or unproven or whatever. My question is who should he have fought? Who could he have beaten for everyone to have considered at the top of the division? Keep in mind that he wasn't invited to the Super 6.

I said the same thing last week. The super 6 has all the guys he should have been facing. Since he wasn't invited initially (and even discussed as a replacement as I believe Showtime decided after not picking him to not use him as a replacement because they wanted to build a logical fight for the winner of the super 6), he hasn't had many opponents to choose from.

He should have fought Jean Pascal (but it wasn't all on him that the fight didn't get made). He should have fought Eric Lucas too, that would have been huge in Quebec, even if it didn't mean anything to most fans.

He could have taken the fight with Kessler when Kessler came to Montreal and called him out. He had a chance to fight Arthur Abraham before the Super Six; never happened. You could throw Kelly Pavlik in there too, but again not Bute's fault that didn't/won't happen.

Anyway, couple of options were there. The important thing to me is what he does now and in the future. Johnson is a good start, if he gets that win (which he should) he needs to keep stepping up.

Bute should have fought Pascal when he had the opportunity.

It's not really an issue of who he coulda fought, the bottom line is that he didn't.

Whether he ducked guys or there was some other reason why he didn't fight the top guys, the fact remains that he didn't.

You may have a point that he was kinda stuck and didn't have much out there with the Super Six going on, but that alone doesn't supercede the fact that he hasn't fought anybody.

I don't consider him a ducker. That doesn't mean I'm gonna give him credit for stuff that he never did. He may end up being the best of the bunch, but ranking him ahead of Carl Froch or Andre Ward is effing criminal.