LUCIAN BUTE vs GLEN JOHNSON

It’s the turn of Lucian Bute to take on ageless warrior Glen Johnson, and the Montreal-based Romanian is ready for 12 rounds of boxing in Quebec on Saturday night. After all, who can stop the very tough, always superbly conditioned veteran from Miami by way of Jamaica?
 
In the Bute camp the plan is to win every minute of every round, although a stoppage would be a tremendous achievement.
 
Bute is a massive favourite in the betting, which seems a bit unkind on Johnson. That said, it is difficult to see how the 42-year-old Johnson can overcome a younger, taller, faster, more naturally gifted opponent whose firepower is considered superior.
 
The fight will be interesting, though, because Johnson is a solid, reliable fighter who will bring pressure all night, hands up in a sort of stonewall defence as he marches forward. Bute might not be able to get too many clean shots through upstairs but might have success with his semi-uppercut left-hand shot to the body from his southpaw posture. This was the punch that did for Librado Andrade in their rematch and sapped the resistance of Ireland’s game Brian Magee. Bute might be able to slow Johnson down if he can dig in enough of those left hands downstairs, and I suppose even an indestructible sort like Gentleman Glen must “go” some time. However fighters such as Antonio Tarver, Chad Dawson and most recently Carl Froch haven’t been able to put a dent in this remarkable fighter who has been such a credit to boxing and lives up to his “gentleman” moniker in his everyday life.
 
Bute and Johnson have sparred together in Miami, helping each other out as they have prepared for big fights, but I am sure that both men will be coming to give their all in the Showtime-televised bout; feelings of mutual liking and good will are likely to be put aside until after the fight.
 
I’m expecting nothing less than another wholehearted effort from Johnson. I think he will land some right hands and put Bute under a degree of pressure, but I see the IBF champion using the ring, moving around the older man and throwing enough punches to keep winning rounds, a bit like the performance that Bute gave when he outpointed Sakio Bika, who, like Johnson, is very durable and always comes to give his best but was outboxed and outmanouevred by the more polished practitioner.
 
Bute by unanimous decision is the logical outcome, and it really is difficult to see past this result, but Bute has stopped his last six opponents and, for me, a late-rounds stoppage, while unlikely, isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

Subscribers' previews include Katsidis vs Burns and Groves vs Smith. We're off to a nice start this week with the Leonard Bundu win in Italy and Sergio Mora winning by KO TKO or DQ, also hitting the under 8.5 in the Mora-Jose Alfredo Flores fight, and Mora and Denis Lebedev easily advanced accumulators. My main computer hard drive packed up on Friday, very frustrating as it contained most of my boxing data base, but if I can get the computer back in running order early enough on Saturday I hope to add to the subscribers' previews and perhaps offer a couple more wagering suggestions before the betting cutoff times.