Friends Rahman and Barrett to meet in ring

CHICAGO - Hasim Rahman and Monte Barrett are friends, and so are their children.

The two fighters will put their friendship aside when they meet in a WBC heavyweight interim title bout Saturday night.

"I've never fought my friends, but I fought my siblings coming up," Rahman, a former WBC and IBF champion, said with a smile. "I'm sure I'll be able to find what it takes to pull out a victory."

Rahman is the WBC's No. 1 contender and Barrett is No. 2. The winner will get a temporary belt and assurance that he's next in line to face WBC champion Vitali Klitschko.

As the No.1 contender and mandatory challenger to WBC champion Vitali Klitschko, Rahman (40-5, 33 knockouts) could simply keep waiting for his title shot. However, Klitschko has postponed three fights due to back and thigh injuries - which Rahman questioned. Barrett (31-3, 17 KOs) is in line to fight IBF champion Chris Byrd.

"Just in case in the future (Klitschko) happens to not want to defend it again or hurts his pinkie toe while running or something like that and pulls out of another fight, then he doesn't deserve to be champ," Rahman said. "This whole interim title came about when he held me up all year.... Everybody loses sight of the fact that he held me up all year long."

Rahman's last fight was a fourth-round technical knockout of Kali Meehan on Nov. 13. Since then, he's been waiting - and growing somewhat impatient with Klitschko's injuries.

"It went from his toe to his back," Rahman said. "I saw that in the movies: my neck, my back, my neck and my back. I don't want to call the man a liar; he could be an actor."

Against Barrett, Rahman plans to go for the early knockout. He doesn't want the fight to go 12 rounds.

Barrett sees this fight as an opportunity, and a championship as an avenue toward "money and land."

"Anything else doesn't matter to me," said Barrett, who went from owning a construction company in his early 20s to being a bankrupt boxer a few a years later. "I want my belt."

Rahman scored an upset when he knocked out WBC and IBF champion Lennox Lewis in April 2001 in South Africa, but Lewis regained the belt seven months later in Las Vegas. Rahman then had a technical loss to Evander Holyfield, a draw with David Tua and a loss by unanimous decision to John Ruiz in their WBA title fight.

Rahman became the WBC's No. 1 contender by winning five bouts in 2004.

This matchup is one of two interim title fights on a card that also features two world championship bouts.

Ricardo Mayorga (26-5-1, 22 KOs) fights Michele Piccirillo (44-2, 28 KOs) for the vacant WBC super welterweight championship; Luis Collazo (25-1, 11 KOs) defends the WBA welterweight title against former WBC champion Miguel Angel Gonzalez (49-4-1, 39 KOs); Alejandro Garcia (24-1, 23 KOs) fights Luca Messi (28-5-1, 11 KOs) in a WBA super welterweight interim championship bout; and Przemyslaw Saleta (42-6, 21 KOs) meets former WBC heavyweight champion Oliver McCall of Chicago (44-8, 31 KOs).

McCall replaced Chicago resident Andrew Golota, who withdrew after suffering a cut in sparring that required 18 stitches. Saleta said he expects the 10-round fight to go the distance, but he had a few choice words for Golota this week - questioning the extent of the injury and saying Golota "doesn't really respect the sport."