Carl Froch has said that he could fight Lucian Bute again early next year.

The IBF super middleweight world champion beat the Canadian in May, but their deal had a re-match clause that both are keen to trigger.

Bute told boxingscene.com: "I know I want my revenge, no matter when. We have a solid re-match clause. Froch will come to Montreal in either March or April."

Meanwhile, Froch told BBC Radio Nottingham: "He's got to give us an answer by the end of this week.

"What they might say is that we have a re-match later in the year, but that's not much good to us.

"If we're going to have the fight, we want to get him out of the way as soon as we can, because the [Mikkel] Kessler fight is the big one."

WBC champion Kessler is one of only two men ever to beat Froch.