Herbie looks to spice up the cruiserweight picture

Tonight former heavyweight champion of the world Herbie Hide competes in Sky Sports’ Prize Fighter competition.

Some have it as a formality that the 38 year old favourite will win the cruiserweight competition and he himself feels he is ready for a title shot in 3 or 4 months but how much would a win mean to him and boxing?

Prize fighter has reinvigorated careers before, Audley Harrison was dead and buried before he won the heavyweight version last year and Hide was probably in the same cemetery. A former two time heavyweight champion Hide’s career has been blighted by his activities outside of the ring including immigration problems, driving offences, possession of a bladed article and general bad behaviour.

Inside the ring Hide has always been a decent fighter and his courage is something that has been praised especially as he was very small for a heavyweight and in coming up against bigger men he never shyed away from a fight.

Having dropped down to cruiserweight Hide is already ranked 3rd by the WBC so why take part in the competition? Simply because it makes his name more relevant especially in the UK. He says it is a warm up for the winner of Giacobbe Fragomeni/Krzysztof Wlodarczyk who fight in May for the vacant WBC title but if he does in fact win the competition he could find himself relevant again.

Audley Harrison has enjoyed a resurgence having won the tournament and off the back of it picked up the European title  and now possibly a world title fight. Hide has already skipped some of these steps as he potentially has a title fight anyway but the competition will expose him to a wider audience.

The cruiserweight division isn’t a marquee division and beyond the ring title holder Tomasz Adamek, The solid operators in there like Ola Afolabi, Marco Huck, Steve Cunningham, Enzo Maccarinelli, Danny Green and Denis Lebedev aren’t even close to being stars yet that’s where Hide could shine.

He has not only the skills but the personality to rule the division so lets hope tonight is the stepping stone he sees it as.

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