The one-time savior has a tough task

The old flame shouldn’t attract moths wise enough to remember the advice of never falling in love with a fighter, especially a heavyweight. But it seems the bigger they are, the harder we fall and next Saturday’s featured matchup brings back one of my old favorites, Michael Grant.

It’s difficult to get sentimental about anything that takes place in Newark, including Grant’s pay-per-view appearance against the former light-heavyweight and cruiserweight titlist Tomasz Adamek of Poland.

More boxing stories from Michael Katz

But there was a time near the end of the last millennium when Grant was regarded as perhaps the savior of the heavyweight division.

He looked the part, an athletic 6-foot-7 and solid 240 pounds, with a long left jab and big right hand. Better, he acted it – a gentle giant oozing class. I was not the only one who was counting on him.

Too bad he had no chin. We should have known even before his denouement against Lennox Lewis at Madison Square Garden, when he was taken out in the second round. In his previous start, against another Pole, Grant was dropped twice in the opening round. He showed much heart in getting back up and into the fight and was rewarded with a tenth-round stoppage of Andrew (Foul Pole) Golota, who quit while well ahead after one knockdown.

Lewis was sitting ringside at the Grant-Golota fight and left extremely confident for his upcoming bout with the unbeaten contender. How easy?

In his next fight, Grant was taken out in the first round by Jameel McCline, dropped by the first punch that landed. He said he hurt his ankle going down. He never was able to get back up to contender status.

In 2003, he was knocked out by the light-hitting Dominick Guinn.

He has won eight straight in his on-again-off-again comeback and at 38 seems to have some tremendous physical advantages over Adamek, who at 6-foot 1½ will appear dwarfed. Grant, with an 86-75 inch reach advantage should make things difficult for at least a while.

But unless he plans to take Adamek into the pivot, even I’m not tempted by buy-back odds of up to 7-1 that I see on one of my old favorites.

Adamek, who last year stopped Golota in the fifth over in Poland, has proven his mettle in two hellacious 175-pound title fights with Paul Briggs and with cruiserweight victories over guys like O’Neil Bell and Steve Cunningham.

He has done well at heavy, too. Besides battering the 256-pound Golota, Adamek has points victories over Jason Estrada, a former Olympian, and one of the latest of the heartbreaking heavyweights, Chris Arreola.

Maybe he shouldn’t be as high as minus $14, but it is virtually impossible to go against the 33-year-old fighter with a 41-1 record and 27 stoppages. In his only loss, he was out-boxed by Chad Dawson, but still managed to drop, and hurt, the undefeated light-heavy after taking a beating.

I’m an old fool, so I’ll probably lay out my hard-earned shekels to buy the program. At least, one of the prelims has a welterweight named Sadam against one named Lenin. Maybe Jose Sulaiman, for a sanction fee of course, can award the winner a WBC belt as interim dictator.

OOPS: Maybe you shouldn’t fall in love with junior welterweights, either. Devon Alexander didn’t look so great getting a homecourt decision over Andriy Kotelnik in St. Louis and I have thus removed him from top 10 status on my pound-for-pound list. He could regain it if he next defeats Timothy Bradley in a 140-pound showdown… The astute Teddy Atlas, on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights, pointed to the 19 pounds Glen Johnson gained from the official weigh-in the day before until his fight with Tavoris Cloud as the probable culprit for the 41-year-old warrior fading badly down the stretch.