BARRETT: FACING THE DREAM

by Ron Borges

Monte Barrett dreams a big dream every night. A very big dream indeed. Yet always it is a dream without a name.

"We just call him Big Man," Barrett said from the mountaintop training camp in the Adirondacks where he's been exiled since July 15 to prepare in loneliness to try and live out that dream on Oct. 7. "We don't even use his name. He's just Big Man."

This Big Man is no Little Big Man, either. At seven feet tall and somewhere north of 300 pounds, World Boxing Association heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev is a big man even by the standards of big men.

Take, for example, the guy to whom he's most often compared - one-time heavyweight champion Primo Carnera. When Carnera briefly held that title in the mid-1930s, a down time for heavyweight boxing similar to the sad state of things today, he stood 6-foot-5 3/4 and weighed somewhere around 250 pounds. He was called "The Ambling Alp" by the lilting literate sportswriters of the day but by Valuev's standards he'd be "The Ambling Adirondack" at best. Next to the towering Russian, Primo Carnera would be a Little Big Man. So what does that make the 6-3, 218-pound Barrett?

Monte Barrett thinks about such things only as they apply to the climb he's about to embark upon on come Oct. 7, when he will give away nine inches and an expected 100 pounds to Valuev when he challenges him at the Rosemont Arena outside of Chicago. Valuev is not a highly skilled man but he doesn't have to be. His size and a better than advertised left jab have led him to a 44-0 record with 32 stoppages and a quarter of a heavyweight title now held in equal pieces by four products of the Eastern European sports machine that once dominated the Olympics Games and amateur sports before the breakup of the Soviet Union opened up professional opportunities for gargantuan guys like Valuev.

Opportunity has been harder to come by for Barrett, who once got a shot at present International Boxing Federation heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko that didn't go well and an opportunity to win the World Boxing Council version of the title had he been able to beat his long-time friend Hasim Rahman a year ago, which he also failed to do on a night in which he fought like a man ambling along in the Alps himself.

This time, however, Barrett believes the planets, and more importantly his own life, are aligned. This time he will be ready when opportunity knocks, even if it is the hand of a Shrek-like man that is doing the knocking. Or, of more concern to Barrett, the knocking down if his challenger is not on his toes.

"It may sound crazy but I had another option," Barrett said of how he ended up facing Valuev. "I know that sounds crazy coming off the Rahman loss but Don (King, who promotes both Valuev and Barrett) said I could fight Valuev or Sergei (Liakhovich, who holds the World Boxing Organization version of the title). I wanted Valuev because he's undefeated. Sergei has one loss. I felt I'd get more exposure fighting him. When I beat him, I feel I'll gain more."

The 35-year-old Barrett has had the kind of up-and-down career path that has made it easy to forget he has not only skills but also a resilience about him at times inside the ring that has allowed him to stand up against early problems with the once hot prospect Joe Mesi only to come back and do enough to get the decision, even though it wasn't given to him.

He came back again after being stopped by Klitschko to outhustle then undefeted Dominick Guinn and stop equally unbeaten Owen Beck in a WBC and IBF elimination fight that left him with a choice of facing either IBF champion Chris Byrd or his old friend Rahman in a match that would make one of them that organization's interim champion. Surprisingly, Barrett chose Rahman but that night was not a dream. It was a nightmare peformance.

Overwhelmed mentally, he now says, by the difficulties of self-managing his career, an unfocused Barrett entered the ring like a guy in a trance and fought that way for 12 rounds. Frankly, Rahman didn't fight much better but he fought well enough to win and with that loss Barrett seemed likely to disappear. But in boxing, if you are patient and have the kind of chin Barrett has, things can happen.

"In this game you never know when you'll get another opportunity," Barrett (31-4, 17 KO) said. "I do think I deserve this title shot. This boxing game has a lot of possibilities and a lot of politics. That's why I've been off for a year. But I'm a matchmaker's dream. I never turn down a fight. I'm an old-fashioned fighter. A rough fighter.

"When I started out I was just boxing for a hobby. Then I started to get good at it and took it a little more serious but I was still out on the streets with my friends. At 22 I was in the construction business and that can be somewhat violent. I was boxing too and I realized 'Hey, I can be good at this.' I'm a physical type person. I liked it from the start."

Boxing didn't always like Barrett back however. At least it didn't embrace him. Some fighters seem to walk a magical path, either because of superior skills, Olympic medals or carefully orchestrated matchmaking. Guys like Monte Barrett have none of those advantages. Barrett is a classic journeyman, a hard working guy who couldn't get a break and who became everyone's stepping stone. But some of those guys didn't watch where they were stepping and so Barrett advanced in a difficult business at the expense of their broken dreams.

Now, more than a decade after he first embarked on this long walk, Monte Barett is one night from glory. As he puts it, "Winning the heavyweight title was a short-term goal when I started. It's been 10 years. So I guess now it's a long-term goal."

Whatever it is, the father of five has much to think about up at his mountain retreat, where he rises daily at 5:30 a.m. running between five and eight miles on most mornings. That is the first of three workouts he endures six days a week, each of them designed to accomplish but one thing.

Make Oct. 7 a dream night against Big Man instead of the nightmare evening with a giant that most people in boxing assume it's going to be.

"I don't think nothing about his size," Barrett said. "I'm not thinking about what he wants to do. I'm concentrating on doing what I want to do.

"I dream about him every night. I think about him every day. I dream about executing my game plan. Doing what I do. Being myself. I have the complete package. I can box, I can punch and I got a great chin. This is an easy fight for me if I do what I'm supposed to do."

What Barrett, or anyone, is supposed to do against a towering presence like Valuev is attack his body, chopping him down minute by minute, round by round. Working with patient presistence to bring down his hands until, when the moment is right, you explode into the Giant's face like David's slingshot and blast him out.

That is Monte Barrett's dream and, like the man he's about to face, it is a big one. It's a dream a long time in the making. A dream, Barrett knows, that must be realized now because if it isn't opportunity may knock no longer.

"If you look at it, this is my last opportunity," Barrett said.

"That's why I've made the sacrifices I've made for this fight, in the ring and out. I've run 120 miles already for this fight. I've boxed so many rounds. I been up in these mountains for two months because I know this is the fight.

"I play it out over and over in my mind. What I'm going to do. What he's going to do. How I'm going to react to him. I've watched his fights on tape so many times. He's got an excellant jab and he can put punches together. He has strengths but he has flaws too. I got to take advantage of the flaws.

"He's never faced anyone like me. No one who's as resilent as me. This fight his chin will get hit. His body will be tested. He won't be fighting at his pace. This won't be a comfortable night for Big Man.

"He's in with a guy who's been through everything in boxing. I been thrown out and cast aside. I been through bankruptcy, problems with promoters, problems with managers, fighting with no manager. I been knocked down and got up. I been through it all and I'm still here, still standing, still strong. My character is built for this. I'll show it Oct. 7."

If he does he'll be The Man. A Big Man at last.