By Chris Williams: In what will be his last one-sided mismatch fight before he likely gets destroyed by WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in September, Polish heavyweight Tomasz Adamek (43-1, 28 KO’s) faces journeyman Kevin McBride (35-8-1, 29 KO’s) tonight in a pay-per-view fight at the Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey. The fight will be going for $29 on PPV for boxing fans that are eager to see this match-up. I can’t see much of anything worth watching on this card, especially with the main event fight.

Adamek has been in the slow lane since escaping with a 12 round decision over Chris Arreola last year. Adamek took on an out of shape Arreola and was staggered a couple of times but was able to win the fight. Since then, Adamek has taken it easy by facing 2nd tier opposition in fights against Michael Grant and Vinny Maddalone. in choosing 37-year-old McBride, Adamek appears to have dropped another tier to 3rd tier for this fight. He obviously doesn’t want to get knocked out before he faces Vitali near the end of the year and takes a probable beating.

I don’t like the idea of heavyweights taking on soft opposition over and over again to build up an inflated record so that they can get a title shot. I don’t see that being good for the sport. I don’t see Adamek-McBride as a PPV fight. Indeed, I don’t even see this as ESPN2 fight. This is a fight that I think should be buried deep on a non-televised card with obscure fighters. Adamek is going to destroy McBride, but so what?

Adamek will have proven nothing other than he can beat a C level fighter. He’s still going to be way out of his class when he fights Vitali in September. To generate interest in that fight Adamek should have been taking on a really good heavyweight now on HBO or Showtime to get boxing fans a look at him so that they’ll want to see him fight Vitali. You don’t go about it in a backwards way by fighting a guy like McBride, who has lost four out of his last five fights and put it on PPV. That seems like an insane thing to do.