Bedard was quite clear on that fact when contacted on Monday morning to comment on the performance of his fighter, who lost a unanimous decision to compatriot Pascal, his second defeat in three bouts.
“At this moment, retirement is not even an option for Lucian Bute,” Bedard exclusively told World Boxing News as the promoter plans a route back for the former super-middleweight king.
“We have to sit down with his team and understand what has gone wrong in the last three fights.”
The stats have since shown that Bute, 33, just wouldn’t let his hands go in the fight, with only 10 punches landing a round, according to CompuBox, and it wasn’t until the last session that Bute finally attempted combinations and clearly won a round.
Talk pre-fight that the Carl Froch defeat in 2012 may have taken the fight out of Bute has certainly rung true and it is hard to see where the Romanian-born fighter can go from here following the manner of his losses.
Bute now seems to be a shell of the punishing finisher that reigned supreme over the 168lb division prior to his doomed trip to the UK and Bedard is the one with the tough job of picking up the southpaw for his next outing.
For 31 year-old victor Pascal, a world tilte shot in on the horizon as fights with the likes of Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev and the winner of Bernard Hopkins v Beibut Shumenov now come into play for 2014.
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