LIBRADO ANDRADE vs ERIC LUCAS

Most of us have our dreams. We dream for things that seem beyond our reach. We dream of second chances, and third chances. We dream of better days ahead. Then there are the seemingly impossible dreams. Eric Lucas, the Quebec 168-pounder, has one such dream. He dreams that he can, at the age of 38, recapture the lost glory of being a world champion.

Lucas tops the bill on Friday Night Fights when he meets Librado Andrade in the 10-round main event in Quebec City. He could hardly have picked a tougher test in only his second comeback bout after almost four years of inactivity.

A Quebec source tells me that Lucas doesn’t need the money. “He’s doing this for himself,” my source said. “It’s something he wants to do and he’s very serious. He has trained very hard, harder than he did for his fight with Mikkel Kessler.”

When Lucas lost in 10 rounds to Kessler in Denmark in January 2006 it looked like the end of the road. By the 10th round he was cut over both eyes, and he was taking punishment when his corner threw in the towel. He retired from the ring and became a promoter.

It must have been difficult for Lucas, a former champion and still a young man in non-boxing terms, to see other Quebec fighters winning fights and hearing the roar of the crowd. He must have missed being involved, because boxing is like a drug for the fighters as well as the sport’s followers — it is very hard to walk away from it.

When the Andrade fight was proposed, Lucas says he jumped at it. One reason, he told the Quebec media, was that he wanted to experience the same sort of euphoria that was in the air in Quebec City last November when Lucian Bute knocked out Andrade in the fourth round.

Another reason that Lucas took the fight, I am sure, is because he and his people feel that Andrade’s punch-resistance might be starting to erode. Though he was certainly hit hard, it did seem that Andrade went out of the fight almost easily against Bute. Andrade has taken considerable punishment with his wear-them-down, attrition style. Could there be some cracks in the wall? Lucas is willing to gamble that there might be. It is an all-or-nothing fight for Lucas. If he loses, he can walk away from the ring with his head held high because he not only had a dream, he dared to try to make the dream become a reality — there’s a big difference between dreaming it and trying to do it.

The big problem for Lucas is that he was never an especially quick fighter, nor was he a seriously hard hitter. He is unlikely to bewilder Andrade with speedy, slick moves, and he might not have the punching power to slow down the steady advance of his younger opponent.

Lucas was always a sound technical boxer, though, and at his best he punched with a consistent accuracy. He might, if he can recapture some of his best form, be able to make Andrade miss, counter him, jab his head back and win rounds.

Can he keep doing it for round after round, though? It is not easy to keep Andrade at bay. Yet Andrade is returning to the ring after a demoralising knockout defeat, and Lucas is in the position of all to gain, nothing to lose — and he will have the roaring support of a passionate Quebec crowd.

Cold logic, however, dictates that Andrade will be too young, too strong, and eventually overrun Lucas’s defences.

Lucas knows how to box, though, and it may not be the sure thing for Andrade that the odds suggest.

I give Lucas a chance, yet I can’t quite buy the dream. Comebacks after long layoffs usually end badly for the fighter who is trying to recapture what he once had. Ring history tells us that. There will need to be magic in the air for Lucas to pull off the unlikely upset.

Andrade’s collapse against Bute gives a glimmer of hope for Lucas’s backers, but I fear that reality will likely reign, perhaps in about seven or eight rounds, with Lucas no longer able to hold off his redoubtable opponent — yet a part of me can’t help hoping that the dream won’t die, not just yet, anyway.