Paul Lewis: Sonny, pick a real fight

Sonny Bill Williams. Photo / Getty Images

Go on to Youtube. Look up the boxing bout from a 'So You Wanna Fight' event from 1999. It's the one between 'The Shadow' and 'Insane Zane'.

The Shadow was billed as having invented "elusive fighting". He apparently trained by dodging cars at a busy intersection.

He showed what the term meant by running round the ring - often with his back to Insane Zane and once hiding behind the referee - in a desperate parody of the word "boxing". The Shadow never actually threw a punch before Insane Zane did the only sane thing and knocked him out.

Insane Zane was a bouncer at a bar in real life. The 'So You Wanna Fight' events are US and Canada-based and a bit like New Zealand's own Fight For Life events in that they pitch ordinary people against each other in the ring.

I'm sorry, but Sonny Bill's fight with Alipate Liava'a - the rotund 43-year-old Tongan sickness beneficiary and gospel singer with tennis elbow ("but don't tell Sonny Bill") who is too crook to work but not to get in the ring - now closely resembles Zane and the Shadow's. Liava'a's physique probably rules out too many references to shadows.

Which is not to say the fight is not lucrative. It's a charity event, with all of Sky's share of the pay-per-view sales going to Christchurch. Sonny Bill is famously giving $100,000 to Christchurch too. So we can't be too harsh.

However, word around town is that Sky may sell as many as 30,000 PPV packages - revenue of about $1.2m at $39.95 each. If that's right, Sonny Bill could clear an awful lot more than $100,000 when the proceeds are divvied up - and that for what is now being seen as a "joke" fight.

The fight is being headlined by Australian middleweight Anthony Mundine against unknown American Xavier Toliver. However, the bout has been solidly promoted here as the Sonny Bill Show.

Mundine's income from this fight could largely be derived from Australian PPV proceeds, leaving Sonny Bill and agent Khoder Nasser to trouser something like $500,000 from the Sky proceeds.

The whole 'Clash For Canterbury' fight night has been masterminded by Nasser, who is also agent to Mundine. Nasser's usual modus operandi is a no-risk approach which props his fighters up against out-matched opponents. Mundine has been pilloried across the Tasman for talking up world-class bouts but actually fighting non-entities.

If Sonny Bill is sincere about being regarded as one of the world's great cross-code athletes, he might have to persuade Nasser to let him in the ring with someone who actually knows what they are doing.

Alipate, in training for this fight, appeared to telegraph his punches; throwing them on Wednesday and landing on Thursday. Maybe it was the tennis elbow. He will be the fourth patsy Williams has fought with only Scott Lewis, showing any signs of actually being able to hurt Williams.

Sonny Bill has pointed out that he has not had an amateur career so has to start somewhere; and fair enough. But boxing experts do not rate Williams' skill (most say he is yet to land a decent punch or take one).

There is a danger his boxing profile could go the same way as Mundine's - supposedly a world-ranked fighter until you read reports like this one from Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

Written late last year, after Mundine's shock loss to journeyman Garth Woods, it said: ..." Mundine [who for the last decade] has played the Australian public for fools, calling out all the great champions of his era - Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Joe Calzaghe and Roy Jones - while ripping off the fans with hollow boasts and fights against hand-picked foes from Rent-A-Victim.

"With better management and more courage, Mundine could have been remembered as a tremendous boxer. At his best five or six years ago he had the speed, the reflexes and sometimes even the punch to challenge the world's best - but history will remember him instead as a fighter propelled by hot air rather than heart."

Bouts like today's against Alipate will bring cash and charity but will be remarkably free of a third "c" word: credibility; which is what Williams the boxer needs. Soon.