Bute saved by hometown decision?

By Jack Todd

MONTREAL — In the hours leading up to Lucian Bute’s pivotal fight against Denis Grachev at the Bell Centre on Saturday night, fight junkies were all saying the same thing: This would be the night when we would find out whether Bute has a glass jaw. 

Thirty fights, an almost unblemished record — then a TKO loss to Carl Froch in England last May, and suddenly Bute’s jaw is made of glass. The cheap, breakable kind. 

After watching 12 brutal rounds Saturday night in which Bute won a fight he should have lost (thanks to the decidedly hometown scoring of three judges who should be ashamed of themselves) it’s clear there’s nothing wrong with Bute’s jaw. It is not made of glass, shatterproof or otherwise. Grachev hit him with enough shots to break down a safe door and Bute never left his feet. 

With the Romanian-born fighter who has made Montreal his home, the cracks run deeper than the jaw — into the fundament of a fighter’s psyche. 

The brawling, awkward Froch clearly got to Bute in England, got inside his head. From the opening bell Saturday night, that was obvious from the tiny differences in the increments of stance and speed, advance and retreat, that Froch had done things to Bute that affected him in the most fundamental way. 

Grachev won round after round (in the eyes of all but the judges and Bute’s wildly partisan backers) because Bute was conceding too much of the ring. Always a cautious fighter, Bute became tentative and uncertain Saturday. Always a crisp, accurate puncher, he missed repeatedly, often with wild haymakers that exploded the air an inch or two short of Grachev’s jaw. 

The crowd roared with every shot — but if the judges had been scoring with their eyes rather than their ears, they might have noticed that Bute wasn’t landing. When he did set himself to throw punches, he was almost always a few inches too far back, so busy retreating that he left himself out of range. 

For 11 rounds, Bute looked like he was done. Not done like a fighter who should retire next week, but done in the way of a man on the downward slope of his career, with no hope of recovery. Again and again, there was an opportunity when Grachev was wide open, but Bute would shuffle away, letting Grachev off the hook. 

Bute scored at times. He is too good a boxer not to. But they were isolated counterpunches that did no visible damage. Meanwhile, the previously undefeated Grachev, a veteran kick-boxer fighting only his 14th bout as a boxer, rocked Bute again and again. Grachev was implacable and consistent, taking the fight to Bute, throwing more punches, landing more, connecting with far more power punches. 

It was a strange spectacle. Bute has always resembled a cobra in the ring: he waits, he watches, he bides his time — then strikes. This time, he was more prey than predator. 

As the Grachev camp said after the fight, Bute won no more than three or four rounds. Had the fight been in San Diego (which the Russian-born Grachev now calls home) Grachev would have won the decision and retained his NABF light-heavyweight belt. 

On my card, Bute won only the first and third rounds and I had the eighth round even, which might have been generous to Bute. Then came the 12th round and something no one could have predicted. Like a man finding a much-loved jacket under a pile of old coats, Bute found himself — the self he was before Carl Froch. 

Grachev left himself exposed. Bute connected. He rattled Grachev. He rattled him again. Suddenly, the cobra was back. For two wild minutes, he pummelled Grachev with accurate, explosive punches, thrown with both hands from all angles. Grachev withstood the punishment and Bute won the round. It wasn’t enough to win the fight, not even close, but it might have accomplished something else: Bute may have been able to repair those cracks in the foundation in time to meet Froch in a rematch if, indeed, their March fight comes off. 

Meanwhile, there are profound questions about Interbox and the hothouse manner in which the organization manages its fighters. Early in his career, Bute fought three times in the U.S. while running through the usual list of has-beens and no-hopers. Since he established himself, however, he has had a steady diet of home cooking, apart from the Froch fight. He fought nowhere except in Montreal, Quebec City or his native Romania. 

If last season’s sad-sack Canadiens could have played 95 per cent of their games at the Bell Centre, they might not have been one of the league’s three worst teams. You can’t build a real fighter, a genuine world-class contender, unless he learns how to go into a hostile environment and win. 

Fourteen years before Bute lost his IBF super-middleweight title to Froch in Nottingham, Otis Grant faced an almost identical set of circumstances when he fought another English brawler, Ryan Rhodes, in Sheffield. Grant, who had too much weight for that WBO middleweight contest, dominated 11 rounds before hanging on, exhausted, in the 12th. But Grant, who spent most of his career as a road warrior, won the title and was not daunted by the setting or the hostile crowd. 

The best showing at the Bell Centre on Saturday came from young Mikael Zewski of Trois-Rivières, who dropped Cesar Chavez of Mexico with an uppercut to the nose (literally) 36 seconds into the first round. Rather than take the cautious, stay-at-home Interbox path, the undefeated Zewski signed with Top Rank and has already fought 11 of his 17 bouts outside Canada. 

Interbox, as cautious in managing its meal ticket as Bute is cautious in the ring, has kept its star at home — and kept him inactive, even by today’s standards. Since 2005, Bute has never fought more than three times in a single year, and in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012 he fought only twice. 

By way of comparison, take a look at the ring record of the incomparable Sugar Ray Robinson, by general consensus the greatest fighter who ever lived. 

Robinson turned pro in October of 1940 after 85 amateur fights. In his first year, he fought 26 bouts and won them all. His first two fights were four days apart, in New York City and Savannah, Ga., in the days when boxers travelled by train. It’s not safe for boxers to do that and sanctioning bodies would never allow it — but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing to limit a fighter to two bouts a year. 

Robinson never limited his diet to home cooking. In 1951, which began for him with the famed St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (a 13-round TKO victory over Jake LaMotta in Chicago) he fought in Miami, Oklahoma City, Paris, Zurich, Antwerp, Liege, Berlin, Torino, London and New York. Robinson rarely fought in the same city twice in a row — and he was the greatest fighter who ever lived. 

Bute is no Sugar Ray — but he’s a fine fighter. If Interbox let him out of the hothouse, if they let him fight in places where he wasn’t guaranteed the hometown decision, he might still develop into a great boxer. But the question now is, did he repair the foundation with that brilliant 12th round Saturday — or was the damage he suffered in May the beginning of the end? 

At the press conference after the bout, Bute and trainer Stéphan Larouche both professed to believe that Bute controlled the fight and won by a comfortable margin. 

If they really believe that, they’re deluded — and in boxing, there’s nothing more dangerous than illusion.