Forgive Lucian Bute. After a 19-month layoff, following a crushing defeat at the hands of rival Jean Pascal, the former super middleweight world champ needed to ease back into boxing. Nobody was about to argue with Bute for what was essentially a spirited televised sparring session.
Bute (32-2, 25 KOs) had zero trouble in dispatching Italian Andrea Di Luisa before thousands of adoring fans inside the Bell Centre in the Romanian’s adopted hometown of Montreal. Di Luisa was spunky from the start, but his gameplan of bothering Bute’s face with pesky jabs and scattered rights wasn’t enough to deter Lucian, let alone keep him away.