"I'm still scraping," Nobles - who less than a year ago weighed more than 360 pounds - said of the layers of ring rust and blubber that had accumulated during so much time off. "But I'm working hard, getting back in shape, doing what I need to do. I still got power in both hands and I still can fight."
The pairing of Nobles (26-1, 21 KOs) and Rabotte (11-18-1, 3 KOs) looks like a mismatch on paper, and it probably is if the Nobles that shows up is anything close to the one who, at his peak, had the look of a potential world champion, or at least someone capable of making a real run at the top of the ratings.
But Nobles, frustrated by what he perceived to be shabby treatment by his then-promoter, Don King, became despondent. Like a lot of unhappy people, he responded by eating too much and too often.
"When depression sets in, unfortunately, guys like me get fat," Nobles said. "You can gain 100 pounds before you know it."
Nobles weighed a trim 212 for his pro debut on Oct. 6, 1995, a first-round stoppage of Juan Carlos Antonio. He was mostly in the 220s and 230s as he put together an impressive string of knockouts against admittedly second-tier opposition, and was still more or less winning the battle of the bulge at 245 for a Nov. 20, 2004, matchup with 7-foot Russian Nikolay Valuev in Germany. Nobles lost on a controversial fourth-round disqualification for what referee Mikael Hook determined to be repeated low blows.
