By Eugene Green

This Friday, Sterling Promotions graciously presents us with a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to spend our hard-earned, sweat-dripping buck on a dazzling Friday Night PPV event.

Tye “Big Sky” Fields, 45-2, 41 KO’s, faces the still dangerous Michael Grant, 46-4, 34 KO’s, in what is probably the last real chance for both big men to prove that, despite their age and a few career setbacks, they still belong in the major leagues. Will “Sky” be the limit for Mr. Grant, or will the challenge prove too “Big” for Mr. Fields? More importantly, is the answer to that question worth fifty dollars?

Career flops aside, both men are huge, powerful and in decent shape. Michael Grant surprised a lot of people with his stamina and hunger for victory in the Tomasz Adamek bout. Personally, I was at the edge of my seat for the entire fight; a knockout of the smaller Adamek seemed to be within Grant’s grasp many time throughout the fight. Win or lose, he proved to the viewers that even at thirty eight, he is ready to make a committed run at the top.

Tye Fields’ potential, on the contrary, remains a question mark.

With 41 out 45 of his opponents KO’d, the guy bangs like a nail in the coffin, but the quality of his opposition has been iffy, to say the least. He pulled out decisions against fighters that wouldn’t be breathing after a single round with anyone worth a mention. Moreover, he crumbled under Monte Barrett, and the relatively unknown Jeff Ford, giving us a good idea of how susceptible his chin is to a good power shot.

 With experience on his side, Michael Grant will likely attempt to make a statement by going to war with Fields, a controlled brawl on his terms. What certainly ups the ante is Grant’s chin, which is far from granite-like. He had been knocked out three times: by Lennox Lewis, Jameel McCline, and Dominick Guinn. Very different fighting styles, but each was able to find and take advantage of a certain weakness in him that certainly makes for an intrigue in this fight. However, the divisional irrelevance of the bout makes it extremely hard to imagine the general public forking over fifty green ones for a fight “in a bubble”. I do see a few diehard purists (who, myself included, live in a vacuum, anyway) chip in on the scrap.

Even assuming the best outcome, such as a sensational knockout, or an utterly dominant performance by one of the fighters, it is still a road into nowhere. Let us play the super-optimist and make a bold prediction that the Klitschkos (or Haye, for that matter) faced with a grim scarcity of worthy opponents, decide to grant (no pun intended) the winner a title shot.

Taking the whole dreaming thing a little further, we might as well ask ourselves the crucial question: if either of these gentlemen fights any of the current belt holders, how would he fare?  

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of instances when it makes sense to pay for a non-title PPV match. If it is a young, talented fighter en route to a title (by beating a current world champion), then the purchase becomes a symbol of our investment in the fighter’s future. This way, when he does get the coveted belt, we can boast to our buddies that we were rooting for him from the very inception of his rise to fame (even though we might be wildly exaggerating, and had only seen that one PPV fight).

Another worthy example is a battle of the legendary veterans (like B-Hop vs. Roy Jones JR., although that one turned out to pretty horrible in the hindsight), or the veteran’s last attempt to get back on top (as in the case of Zab Judah).  

Here, we have neither. It is a very interesting, yet an irrelevant bout. Neither fighter, at their age, skill level and chin susceptibility, is likely to capture a title. At best, this fight belongs on ESPN Fight Night. I wonder if the most venerable Sterling Promotions had not given sufficient thought to these rather obvious and important matters (going to its website, I discovered that its front page was in Latin, out of all languages! Thinking that it is some kind of a divine message sent from above to help us mere mortals understand why this fight is a PPV, I plugged the text into Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, the explanation was much simpler: the script is just standard “filler text”, used on unfinished web pages). My humble wish in this case is that next time, instead of trying to cash in on the viewer, Sterling will put forth a more mutually beneficial offer, actually worthy of a purchase. And finish their web page.

This, in no way, is meant as an insult to the fighters. On the contrary, we should admire their desire to try. Both are taking a huge gamble, facing a dangerous opponent that could crumble their dreams in a single instant. And who knows? This sport makes any kind of a conjecture possible. After all, a puncher’s chance has not been repealed yet.

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