Paul Butler Targets Winner Of Naoya Inoue Vs. Nonito Donaire II
The newly crowned WBO bantamweight champion Paul Butler has no intentions of raving yet as he looks at a bigger picture.
On Thursday morning, Butler was upgraded to WBO bantamweight champion after John Riel Casimero was stripped of his title. The decision was on the cards after Casemiro pulled out of the fight as he struggled to make weight for his fight against butler in Dubai last December.
Casemiro was caught using a sauna — the use of saunas is forbidden by the British Boxing Board of Control. Butler then faced Jonas Sultan for the interim title in Echo Arena in Liverpool and won the fight by unanimous decision.
Butler (34-2,15 KOs) got the news of him being elevated to full champion through his girlfriend early on Thursday morning.
“I found out at half seven this morning,” Butler said. “I was fast asleep and my girlfriend came running in the bedroom. It was like ‘Guess what? Guess what?’ I thought someone had died. ‘You’ve been upgraded to full champion’. I was made up.”
Butler is willing to fight the winner of Naoya Inoue and Nonito Donaire if given the opportunity in the future.
“If the winner of that wants to unify the whole division, that is the route I will go,” he said. “If they don’t, I will have to get a defense in around September or October time.
“You would think that they would both like to unify the division. I know Inoue has aspirations of moving up again, but I am sure he would want to unify first.
“I have never met them. I boxed on the same cards as them, when Inoue boxed [Emmanuel] Rodriguez and then when Donaire boxed [Ryan] Burnett, but I am not the type to go up and ask for a picture, even though they will both go down as legends.
“It would be an honor to share the ring with either one of them.”
Butler shared sympathy for Casimero for being unable to make weight in Dubai but was also stunned when he found that Casemiro’s team was using the sauna in the rescheduled bout.
“I felt sorry for him in Dubai because I have been in that position and I watched him in the gym three times a day,” Butler said.
“So, I felt sorry for him afterwards, because he had obviously done things wrong, he saw me and thought he only had to make weight, but it didn’t work out.
“But this time around he is uploading live videos to his live Facebook, they are in the gym and say ‘let’s go sauna’ and then they are videoing him in the sauna. What type of team does that? It’s just wrong.”