Big Time Challenge for Michael Grant

By Michael Amakor - August 10, 2010 - Watch Trailer

On August 21, 2010 six foot seven two hundred and fifty plus pound  former NABF & IBC Heavyweight champion “Big” Michael Grant 46-3 (34 KOs) will challenge  Tomasz “Goral” Adamek 41-1 (27 KOs) for his IBF International and WBO North American Boxing Organization heavyweight titles at the Prudential Center in Newark as the main event on a fight card suitably labeled the “Big Challenge”.

Since being knocked out in the second round by former undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis for the IBF, IBO & WBC world titles back in 2000, nothing has been the same for the previously undefeated Grant who was being hailed at the time as the next great heavyweight prospect, but he was given a pass because the boxing establishment reasoned that he challenged Lewis before he was ready. However, Grant went on to suffer another ignoble first round TKO loss in his very next fight to priming Jameel “Big Time” McCline almost a year and a half later and boxing fans and the media became more critical of his abilities. It did not help in their assessment of his skills that over the next ten years Grant fought a string of second tier opponents punctuated by another seventh round TKO loss in his next step up in class to rising prospect Dominick Guinn in 2003 either.

However, he rebounded from his last defeat and he is now riding an eight fight win streak, but it has not seemed to matter as his critics and unforgiving boxing fans, whose historic short memories have been clouded by those spectacular losses, have not given him a chance to win this fight. Almost nobody seems to remember that Grant has only lost three times in his professional career including going 17-2 since that world title fight loss back in 2000.

"The timing for those fights was not quite right and I was fighting with injuries" Grant would later summarize about those losses, but right now "I'm experienced; I've got a hell of a trainer; I'm having a hell of a camp. I mean everything is lining up. This fight is a very important opportunity to me and my family, reiterated Grant whose confidence is no doubt boosted by the presence of former light heavyweight champion Eddie Mustapha in his corner as head trainer. Eddie quickly chimed into the debate "You guys gotta remember something. I am the first guy to give Adamek his first defeat, not Floyd Mayweather, when he fought Chad Dawson. And I'm gonna give him his second defeat. It's as simple as that."

Despite these assurances most boxing fans still suspect that the rusty Grant (he has only fought once in the last two years) is being served up as another name opponent or tune up for the more active Adamek to use as target practice, or as a stay busy fight on his way towards a possible world title shot, but Grant disagrees stating “This is not a hard or complicated fight. It's not like 2 chess players making the best moves. No, it's not like that at all. He's (Adamek) a very simple, ABC type guy”.

“Yeah Right” many boxing fans would retort and when they also consider the $29.95 pay per view fee they would have to cough out to watch this fight, they may opt out while forgetting that  unheralded fights like this one have all the ingredients for a classic in the making similar to the  overlooked fight between heavyweight contenders David Tua and Monte Barrett a few weeks ago that turned out to be a highly entertaining affair to everyone's surprise.

"I am ready to fight! We are training hard 9 weeks, this week is 10. I am ready for a great fight, a tough fight." "I love tough fights because people remember them for a long time. I want to be champion and I would like to fight great fights." stated Adamek at a recent press conference and one wonders if he may have unwittingly awoken the sleeping giant whose fistic bombs and 86 inch reach have enabled him to go to the twelfth round only once in his career, and Mustapha, Grant's Trainer assuaged any misconceptions about the coming storm by stating "I don't know what Main Events (Adamek's Promoters) was looking at when they signed Michael Grant, but I think they made one of the biggest mistakes in their history” he said.

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