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Saturday Night HBO will show an interesting fight. When the Super Six Super Middleweight (168 pounds) tournament started, I thought they left some people out. One of them fought recently, in Allan Green, a decision win he looked kind of bored with. He did in fact say he wanted to be in the tournament. It was surprising to me that if they had the choice and would pick Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward over Green, but they did, and now, make no stake about it. A Gold Medalist has just won his first title. It was the WBA title. There’s three major titles, and another tournament winner, Carl Froch, holds the WBC. Well, there’s an undefeated guy with the IBF title not in the tournament named Lucian Bute (Beau-tay) There’s also another tough guy in Librado Andrade, and they fought last year.

On Saturday Night, they will fight again. So it must have been good, right? Kind of. But definitely interesting, as Andrade is always fun to watch, a come at you kind of fighter that wants to knock you out. Ironically, things didn’t start out too great for him. In the amateurs he was 3-13, yet turned pro. And, to show you how different pro boxing is to amateur, he compiled a 24-0 record, with a great knockout percentage, and in ’07 got a title shot against “then undefeated” Mikkel Kessler (yes, the man Andre Ward beat up to take his title) Kessler soundly beat Andrade.

Andrade got beat up bad, Max Kellerman even said he thought some of the rounds could have been scored 10-8 because he was wobbled and hurt a lot. At the end though, he was congratulated for his effort, his courage, his heart. But that doesn’t get you a title. So Andrade went back to work. He appeared on the undercard of an HBO PPV that got him an opening for an HBO Boxing Program, against a 31-1 Stieglitz, a title eliminator, and he knocked him out. So he got a shot at undefeated IBF champ Lucian Bute.

Again, in another title shot, Andrade was dominated, but in the last round, with less than thirty seconds, Andrade floored Bute, and the ref started counting, but then stopped, and told Andrade to get back in his corner. But he wasn’t out of his corner. The ref picked up the count, then turned around again, and yelled at Andrade again, but he was over ten feet away from him, every camera angle showed that, being that Andrade was in no camera shot during the count, which went way over ten. Bute was out of it. He was done, and he may have gotten up at nine, but he was so hurt Andrade would have had time to finish him. It was also in Bute’s hometown. This got a lot of negative attention and most people think Andrade should be the champ.

So Saturday Night, on HBO, Andrade gets another main event and another shot at a title. Ironically, this fight falls right after the first stage of the super middleweight tournament, which features two other title holders. By the end of this tournament, and the match tomorrow, and with Allan Green still on a winning track, there’s lots of excitement in this division, and a lot of things are changing, and at the end of the tournament, we will be able to compare the top ten from right before the tournament started, to right after. Already, the number one ranked Super Middleweight, Mikkel Kessler, lost to Andre Ward who wasn’t even ranked in the top ten. Let’s see what happens tomorrow night and if it will have impact on the Super Six, or maybe more excitement than the Super Six. Again, it’s HBO vs Showtime, who took the Super Six, and the first Bute – Andrade fight took place on Showtime, yet HBO bought the rematch. I’m very excited that even if they’re not in the division, everyone in the super middleweight division is getting exposure, and chances at being a huge star, champion, or dare I say, a legend.

Robert Earle Stanton is a freelance writer, short fiction author and novelist.

Check out the book The Fearless Harry Greb: Biography of a Tragic Hero of Boxing by clicking here.

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