Lucian Bute of Montreal had to sweat to make the weight limit Thursday for his minor super-middleweight title fight with Ghanian James Obede Toney.
Bute (17-0) made the 168-pound limit, but only after pedalling off some extra poundage. Bute spent much of the summer on vacation in his native Romania and had a shorter than usual training camp.
The dynamic lefthander is to face Toney (18-1-1) with the NABF, NABA and WBC Continental titles on the line in a 12-rounder on Friday night at the Bell Centre.
Toney is no relation to American heavyweight contender James Toney, who lost a bout to Samuel Peter on Sept. 2.
``Right now I'm fine,'' Bute said. ``We were a bit excited before the weigh-in, but now that it's done, I feel good.
``Now I can eat and get ready for the fight.''
Bute, currently ranked fourth by the WBC and fifth by the WBA, is the clear favourite against Toney, ranked 10th by the WBO.
A win could give Bute a place on the udnercard of a world title bout next month in Copenhagen between Markus Beyer and Mikkel Kessler.
The 10-round co-features have another Romanian based in Montreal, light heavyweight Adrian Diaconu (22-0), against Olando Rivera (15-5-2) of the United States and heavyweight Jean-Francois Bergeron (24-0) of St-Jerome, Que., against Edgar Alazao Silva (14-9) of Brazil.
In six-rounders, super-lightweight JoJo Dan (14-0) of Toronto will face Jorge Daniel Miranda (20-1) of Argentina; bantamweight Sebastien Gauthier (7-0) of St-Jerome fights Sandro Orlando Oviedo (24-21-2) of Argentina and super-lightweight Antonin Decarie (10-0) of Montreal faces Jose Luis Alvarez (2-3) of Mexico.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
