By Tony Krebs: 37 year-old heavyweight Monte Barrett (34-6, 20 KOs) pulled off a stunning 1st round KO of the giant 6’8″ Tye Fields (41-2, 37 KOs) tonight in a bout scheduled for 10 rounds at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fields, 33, who has built up an impressive knockout string with very careful matchmaking in his nine-year career, went right after Barrett in the 1st round, bum rushing him like he has many of his other 42 opponents in his career. In this case, however, Fields was way over his head in terms of quality, having fought mostly low C-level fighters at best during his entire career, and in no way ready for a quality professional like Barrett.

Wasting no time, Fields went right after Barrett from the get go, landing huge left hooks to the midsection, one after another, telegraphing them badly on each occasion. Instead of wilting under the pressure, Barrett instead backed up to the ropes and waited for Fields to come forward. The always predictable Fields then throw another long, slow left hand to the midsection, which Barrett timed perfectly and came over the top with a short right hand that crashed off the chin of Fields, stunning him badly, followed by another big right hand that landed on the side of Fields’ large jaw, momentarily freezing him and causing him to bend forward at the waist.

Barrett then landed a weak left hand that glanced off the chin of Fields. At this point, Fields disparately trying to clinch, held out his hands as if to grab a hold of Barrett. However, Barrett would have none of it, and immediately pelted Fields with a big left hand that straightened up from his previous leaning position, causing Fields to stagger and do a little dance with his legs. Barrett then unleashed another powerful right hand that landed to the top of Fields’ head, this one causing Fields to do a little hop, much in the same way that Joe Frazier jumped up slightly after getting hit with a huge uppercut from George Foreman in their 1973 heavyweight title bout.

Barrett missed with his next punch, a left hand, but immediately followed it with a monstrous right hand that landed to the top of Field’s head, sending him timbering backwards like a big tree, falling flat on his back on the canvas, the back of his head ricocheting of the canvas like a ball. Fields, badly hurt, his eyes rolling around in his head, started to get up slowly, then collapsed once before finally groggily getting up off the canvas. By the time he made it up, however, the referee Kenny Bayless had waived off the fight, stopping the fight at 0:57 of the 1st round.

Barrett, who previously lost to three giant heavyweights in his career in Wladimir Klitschko, Lance Whitaker and Nikolay Valuev, all of which had much more boxing skills and power than Fields. I suppose this gave Barrett a head up on most of Fields’ over-matched opponents, who had no inkling of what to do against such a big heavyweight as this. Barrett, however, had performed admirably in a 11th round losing effort to Valuev in October 2006, giving Valuev a lot of problems in the bout before ultimately getting stopped by him in the 11th.