Crooner steps in to hit the high note

Don Turner told the man, told him straight. He said he didn't want to deal with no doofus guys. The man kept coming though.

He's six feet seven, he'd tell Don, ya gotta take a look.

Six feet seven don't mean he ain't no doofus, Don would say.

Just take a look, the guy would say, would it kill ya to take a look?

Finally, Richard Steele got Don Turner into a gym to take a look at Michael Grant. Turner drew a sharp breath. Man, he said, I think you've hit the jackpot. Of course that was then and that was Vegas, and with all that neon and all that cash messing up the Nevada air Don Turner might have got it wrong. Michael Grant, a big, placid, bespectacled guy out of Chicago by way of Philadelphia, might be the jackpot or he might just look like the sort of rigged bet that suckers people who should know better.

Is Grant the new face of boxing? Turner and Steele will know more tonight. Grant ducks under the ropes in Madison Square Garden there to meet Lennox Lewis in a bout which, given the physical stature of the men, could turn out to be the Empire State Building versus the Sears Tower, without the speed. It's a bout for the colour writers if not for the purists. In the alliterative shorthand of boxing hype, Lewis is the "chess-playing champion". Michael Grant's party trick is singing. Soul, gospel, and when he lowers his voice he manages just enough Sinatra to risk becoming the "crooning challenger". In Chicago they always knew Grant was going to be something, but probably not a singer. It was just a matter of sitting and waiting for him to figure out what that would be. He was a baseball pitcher of high promise at William Rainy Harper High School, firing the cowhide at 90 m.p.h. towards startled adolescents. He was offered a tryout for the major leagues by the Kansas City Royals, but turned down the offer, and opted instead to take a scholarship to play football at Mount San Antonio, a community college in California.

Grant played tight end and defensive end, two positions which require beef and speed. He brought both qualities in abundance, shifting his 6 ft 7 in frame through 40-yard sprints in 4.63 seconds.

After a year at Mount San Antonio, Grant, still dissolute and unfocused, transferred to Southwest Junior College, where he stayed for one term, before shuffling on to California State at Fullerton, where he became a basketball forward.

He looks back on the missed opportunity of a career in the National Football League with scant regret. "Could have been me, another black man in the NFL getting rich and acting ignorant."

Although he has matured into a quiet, thoughtful 27-year-old, too much partying and tomcatting at Fullerton curtailed his academic career, and just out of his teens he found himself at a loose end.

On a trip to Las Vegas in 1992, to see the heavyweight championship bout between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe, he went to work out at the gym owned by the boxing referee Richard Steele. Steele showed him a pair of gloves, the business caught Grant's imagination. Don Turner was drafted as coach.

Turner's involvement may be most fortuitous. He is familiar with the plodding, serene, Lewis style, having trained both Holyfield and Henry Akinwande for bouts with the champion. Grant and Holyfield have trained together in a spirit of mutual admiration at Turner's Main Street Gym in Houston, and while Grant quietly avows that he would like to be the next "Real Deal", Holyfield is generous in his assessment.

"He's big, strong and fast. He has all the attributes to be one of the all-time greats."

Grant isn't by any means an incendiary fighter, and quite often has needed to have his back to the wall to come out really swinging. When he does cut loose, though, he showcases a key element in any challenger's armoury: a strong jab. The jab has impressed Holyfield as much as anything.

"He connects so hard with that jab that when he looks for his next shot he's pushed his opponent out of range. He really knocks them back."

He had 12 amateur fights, winning 11 in what was a necessarily brief prologue to a professional career which has seen him cosseted and coddled until such time as the big money might start coming in. Critics note that many among his 31 victims so far would be deemed to have been flatliners under correct medical supervision, but those looking for the bright spots to justify a wager point to a few good nights when Grant delivered what he promised.

In 1997 he blew down Jorge Luis Gonzalez, a 6 ft 8 in turret of Cuban boxing promise, in one round. That fight got him signed up to HBO, who have helped create the image of Grant as the next great heavyweight title holder, the thinking man's pug. His HBO debut against a stubborn but limited journeyman called David Izon ended in a flurry of unlikely activity as Grant reeled off 47 unanswered punches before the ref stepped in. That bout was the last occasion that Grant threw caution to the wind. The business since then has been to usher him past a series of credible if not lethal challenges and get him in position for the big money. He will earn $2.5 million tonight.

It took 10 rounds of blood and gore for him to earn a decision over Lou Savarese, and then last November Grant twice found himself sitting on the canvas in the first round of his bout with the large Polish goon, Andrew Golota. Finally, late in that bout, Grant discovered that his right hand wasn't just for signing contracts and a series of straight shots from that hand persuaded Golota to retire for the evening.

Tonight Grant will need to produce those straight rights and rediscover the attractive jab he displayed in previous fights. Lewis may be infuriatingly slow to anger, but he can pick his openings and exploit them quietly. Turner reckons that Grant will have to get in close to hustle Lewis and steal his power. After that, it's just a question of keeping the champion busy with combinations and movement. If Michael Grant can do all that he will finally have produced the jackpot and escaped the "built like Tarzan, fights like Jane" label which attaches itself to so many of the challengers in a watery heavyweight division.

In New York, business at the box office has been slow. Lennox Lewis isn't the sort of guy to seize this city's imagination, and Grant has talked sweetly about Lewis and about boxing being a way to help his mother, who worked in a factory making candy bars when he was growing up. The old lady has retired now and travels with her church group, but news of her pleasant twilight years doesn't make for rip-roaring business at the pay per view desk. Whatever happened to Mike Tyson and all those other hard cases?