The last British fighter to drop a weight and win a second world title was a balding Cornishman who used to spar with his wife.
Paul Butler shares none of Bob Fitzsimmons’s eccentricities of more than a century ago, but if he takes the IBF super-flyweight title from Zolani Tete at the Echo Arena in front of his Liverpool fans on Friday night, to add to the bantamweight belt he reluctantly gave up last year, he will add to his growing reputation as one of the most talented boxers in either division.
To perform at the highest level at both weights makes serious demands on a boxer’s body, given there is not much surplus to work with on a smaller frame in the first place, but Butler says the switch-down does not weaken him. If anything, it concentrates his power, he maintains.
We will see the evidence of that against his classy South African opponent, who irked Butler when he withdraw from this contest with a hand injury last October. The unbeaten Liverpudlian had not long moved up to take Stuey Hall’s IBF title at 118lb and was subsequently forced to fill in time with a non-title bout against a moderate Mexican, Ismael Garnica, whom he outpointed in 10 low-key rounds.
Those frustrations have brought Butler to the required pitch for Tete, and he expressed little regard for the champion in the build-up. “He’s bottled it before,” Butler said this week, referring to a 2010 fight in which the then champion Moruti Mthalane forced Tete to quit in the fifth round. “I don’t like to use that word because you’ve got to have bottle to get in the ring, but he has done it and if you’ve got that in you then it will always be there.
“He’s going to be a lot tougher than Stuey Hall, who toughed it out a lot, and he’s got a much better boxing pedigree. It will have to be educated pressure and it’s going to be something people haven’t seen from me before.”
Tete, meanwhile, showed extraordinary candour admitting to Steve Lillis on the BoxNation website that he did, indeed, give up in that fight – which might be a first for the sport. “I did quit against Mthalane, but I had no one to train me and took the fight at four weeks’ notice,” he said. “I was saving myself for another day and would never do that again. I have proven myself since. If Butler is still around after eight rounds I will give him credit because I am going to knock him out.”
It is the champion’s 27th birthday on Sunday. If Butler has handled his weight reduction properly, he will be sending him home with more bruises than belts.
