Lucian Bute's speed and power and craftiness are all very good, but that left uppercut of his is special. It might be my favorite weapon in boxing right now. In a super middleweight bout webcast on ESPN3, Bute dropped Jesse Brinkley three times with it, once to the body and twice to the head, the second head shot putting Brinkley down for good in the 9th. Brinkley fared better than most of Bute's victims, showing good defense and landing the occasional overhand right while toughing out the first two knockdowns, but he was woefully outclassed, as expected.
Meanwhile, over on ShoBox, Antonio Tarver made his heavyweight debut in a decision win over Nagy Aguilera, primarily using his light heavyweight speed to outbox Aguilera by avoiding his shots and landing his 1-2 against the curiously backpedaling larger man. I expected worse from a 41-year-old who wasn't much of a puncher at 175 pounds coming off a 17-month layoff, but that didn't save it from being a "meh" kind of showing, not the capture-the-imagination kind of performance Tarver was hoping to muster.
Since neither fight was particularly competitive, it's enough to make one turn one's attention to what's next for Bute and Tarver.
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