ROCKY’S A BIG SHOT!

Brit to prove he is a New York giant

ROCKY FIELDING has been staring out of his New York hotel window this week looking at his name up in lights on one of boxing’s most iconic venues.

It is not long ago that the Liverpool man was dreaming of one day having the money to do his Christmas shopping in the Big Apple.

Fielding has enjoyed some ride to get there and in the early hours of tomorrow he will defend his ‘regular’ WBA super-middleweight title against Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez at Madison Square Garden.

“Before I come out there were people from back home here on holidays and they were tagging me in pictures of my face being on the taxis,” said Fielding.

“I was like, ‘Wow, crazy’. I’m just walking down the street to go to one of the shops and see a taxi with me all over it.

“I have to take this all in, I have to soak it up. But once I get inside the arena, it will be full focus on the job – me and him in the ring and that is it.”

When the shock news broke of Fielding facing arguably the biggest name in boxing right now, the trolls were out in force on social media.

“Everyone is giving me stick on Twitter,” he said. “But I’m blocking them all. I don’t need that negativity. How can you knock someone wanting to chase a dream?”

Fielding’s journey is a real-life Rocky story. His professional debut was in a Salford leisure centre.

There was no promoter backing him, just his then trainer Oliver Harrison and his own close friends.

However, the journey has not been smooth.

It was just before his first-ever trip to New York, when he could finally afford it, that his career and life hit rock bottom.

Believed

Fielding had been brutally knocked out by local rival Callum Smith in the first round of their November 2015 clash, but then hit the floor again when his mum, Carol, told him she was battling cancer.

He went on the holiday but his mind was elsewhere.

But now his mum, having beaten the disease, will make her first trip to New York to see her son face Alvarez at the arena where the very best in the sport have performed. Fielding said: “I told her who I was fighting and she went, ‘Who is it?’.”

Even at the start of this year he wouldn’t have believed it was possible.

He was listening to every positivethinking podcast he could find and watching motivational videos on YouTube, as fights kept falling through and his career was stalling, while his partner was pregnant with their second child.

Then the call came to face Tyron Zeuge in the champion’s backyard in Germany in July. Fielding stopped him in the fifth.

“Now, in the second half of the year, I’m a world champion fighting Canelo at the Garden – it is amazing,” said Fielding.

Middleweight ruler Alvarez enters the ring as favourite despite his move up in weight for his first fight as part of a five-year broadcast deal worth £278m.

“If I beat him, I hope I get half of his deal,” added Fielding. “I’d take a quarter!”