TYE FIELDS vs MONTE BARRETT

The matchmaking involving huge heavyweight Tye Fields has been extremely careful, but on Saturday’s PPV show in Las Vegas the risk-level is ratcheted up significantly when the big fellow meets former world title challenger Monte Barrett in a scheduled 10-rounder.

Barrett is 37 and has seen better days, but he is a huge step up from some of the people that Fields has been meeting and I know there are good judges of boxing who are prepared to plonk down some money on the veteran should any of the sports books post a line on this fight.

When I spoke to Barrett on the phone a few weeks ago he sounded full of confidence. He said he sees a lot of flaws in Fields but will be concentrating on what he sees as his opponent’s greatest asset — the ability to keep up a high punch-volume for 10 rounds. Barrett said he was preparing himself to go 10 busy-punching rounds to counter Fields’s workrate.

“I think the fight’s going to be much easier than a lot of people expect,” he said. "Tye Fields is a very off-balance, uncoordinated fighter. He throws a lot of punches that have no meaning for them, and for some reason his corner people tell him he’s a big puncher, which he’s not. I’m looking forward to the fight.”

Fields is much the bigger man, of course, at 6ft 8ins and about 260 pounds, but Barrett fought someone even bigger in Nikolay Valuev and he was doing well for a while, landing some heavy right hands, before the Russian’s size and weight wore him down. When I suggested to him that some heavyweights might not have been able to stand up to the right hands he landed on Valuev, he said: “We’ll never know, but I know Tye Fields won’t stand up to them.”

In the Fields camp, though, the big fellow’s trainer, Jesse Reid, sees this as a very good fight for his man. Reid said over the phone from Las Vegas that he wants Fields to fight like a big man, be an intimidator and put Barrett under pressure from the start. “So many people talk so much crap about Tye,” he said. “We’ve never turned down anybody.”

Barrett has not just big-fight experience but big-man experience, having fought Valuev, Wladimir Klitschko and Lance Whitaker. Although shockingly stopped by Cliff Couser, he said that he twisted his knee when he went down — in a rematch he destroyed the Mike Tyson-lookalike in two rounds, and in his last fight Barrett easily knocked out journeyman Damon Reed in the second round, so he is coming into the fight on a positive note. He talks a great fight but Jesse Reid says that the New Yorker doesn’t realise what he has let himself in for. “He’s never had anybody that can throw the punches that Tye throws,” he said.

The plan for Fields is to keep punching until Barrett cannot take any more. What happens, though, if Barrett lands a right-hander of the type that he bounced off of Valuev’s noggin? Will Fields be able to take the blow and keep coming? I know it was a long time ago, but in Fields’s only defeat he was knocked out in 72 seconds. He avenged this loss with a one-round, payback knockout win but, fairly or unfairly, a doubt lingers about Fields’s ability to take a punch. Jesse Reid says there is no problem, that Fields has been hit on the chin by Samuel Peter in sparring and never went anywhere. “He’s got a good chin, believe me,” Reid said.

Perhaps Saturday’s fight will settle some questions about Fields — one way or the other.

I know that a lot of people do not know quite what to make of the fight, which, perhaps, is why the professional oddsmakers have left it alone. This amateur oddsmaker makes Fields the favourite. I know that Reid has put an enormous amount of time into Fields — a supremely dedicated effort — and I think that this hard work by trainer and fighter will be rewarded on Saturday.

People whose opinion I respect tell me I am wrong, that this going to be a The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall type of situation. We will see, but I am taking the big guy to pass this meaningful test by wearing down Barrett for a stoppage win in six or seven rounds.