Subject: Why Did David Tua Fade Away Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:03 pm
By William Dettloff
David Tua’s recent KO win over one Shane Cameron in New Zealand was so reminiscent of his wins in the late 1990s that those inclined toward strong belief in the highly improbable are all tingly over the possibility of a substantive Tua comeback.
Here’s how much it means in the real world: The opponent Tua’s people are talking of going after next is Hasim Rahman, who more or less had Tua’s number in the old days but hasn’t had a good moment in the ring since Friends went off the air.
Still, Tua, through the power of his left hook and the force of his charm, makes indulgence in the fantasy of a great comeback nearly irresistible. It doesn’t hurt that George Foreman made it clear that bald, chubby, lovable, hard-hitting heavyweights can do very brisk business no matter their age.
And at 36 years old, Tua is a relative adolescent compared to the Foreman who stretched Michael Moorer at a time when it is said one could stand next to him in an elevator and actually hear his arteries hardening.
But this is not to gauge Tua’s chance at success, which, given the pitiable state of the heavyweight division, is probably about as good as anyone’s. Rather, it is to ask what went wrong in the first place that caused Tua’s once gold-chip value to hit the floor faster than Lindsey Lohan on a blind date.
In 1996, there wasn’t a hotter heavyweight in the world than Tua. His promoter, Main Events, was one of the most powerful in the game. His HBO-televised knockouts of John Ruiz, Darroll Wilson, David Izon, and Oleg Maskaev led to his first loss, a close decision to the criminally talented Ike Ibeabuchi in a memorable slugfest.
Even with the loss, Tua had everything: an engaging personality, an iron chin, the best left hook in the heavyweight division since a prime Mike Tyson, and, as a Samoan, an unusual and marketable image.
After the loss to Ibeabuchi, he put together 10 straight wins that led to a title shot against Lennox Lewis in 2000, who summarily dominated and outpointed him in one of the great disappointments in recent heavyweight boxing.
HBO’s Jim Lampley, who called virtually all of Tua’s bigger fights, told RingTV.com that expectations for Tua were high going into the fight.
“He got to that threshold and everybody was excited to see the fight because certainly if there was a real man in the division who wasn’t going to back down to Lennox and somebody who could take his punch and go after him, then maybe this was going to be the guy,” Lampley said.
“I remember watching the fight and wondering why in the world it seemed like David never wanted to leave the front porch. That was man against boy and I think it left a really deep scar.”
After the loss, Tua’s career sputtered. There was a loss to Chris Byrd in a terrible style matchup for Tua, wins over nonentities and an occasional high-profile KO win, such as those over Michael Moore and Fres Oquendo. And there were long layoffs. The win over Cameron was Tua’s first fight in 25 months.
Ronnie Shields, who trained Tua for six years, told RingTV.com that Tua was never the same after the loss to Lewis, but it wasn’t because Lewis beat him up. It wasn’t even necessarily the rib injury Tua suffered two months before the fight and that he claimed he reinjured during the bout.
“Training went good but when he fought Lewis that was the most pressure he’d ever had in his life. And it was the first time I ever saw him get hurt,” Shields said. “Lennox hit him with a right hand in the first round that really hurt him. I didn’t know how he was going to react to it and he didn’t react to it too well. He finally came on around the fifth or sixth round but by then it was too late for him. After that, everything went downhill.”
Shields said too that Tua didn’t go into the fight in the right state of mind. According to Shields, Tua’s family and friends from New Zealand held a prefight prayer session with Tua before they left the hotel and during the prayer Tua’s mother and sister and his girlfriend started to cry. Shields was confused.
“I was shocked,” he said. “They were actually crying. Everybody was crying. I said, ‘Hold up, this is not a sad thing, this is a happy thing. You’re supposed to be celebrating that David is about to become heavyweight champion of the world. I didn’t understand.”
Then, according to Shields, Tua’s father, his manager Kevin Barry and Tua went to a separate part of the room together and when they came back Barry looked forlorn. Shields asked him why.
“He said his father just told him he loved him,” he said. “And that’s not a good thing. I said how is that a bad thing? His father told him he loved him. He told me, ‘Ronnie, that’s bad for us.’
“I said ‘Hold up, what do you mean that‘s bad?’ He said his father never told him in his whole life that he loved him. Now his father all of sudden tells him he loves him. And now David is crying. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God. And I have to try to get this kid ready to fight.
“I don’t know if that prayer was the right thing to do but something messed his mind up and he’s never been the same since,” Shields continued. “He always started slow but he kept his power and always tried. That’s what was a big surprise when he fought Lewis. All that went out the window.”
That wasn’t all that was going out the window. Even at that time Tua was having doubts about Barry, his longtime manager. In 2003 he sued Barry and Barry’s business partner, Martin Pugh, alleging they’d stolen millions from him. It was front-page news in New Zealand, and in Lampley’s opinion the split contributed to Tua’s downfall.
“He’s a very emotional man and I think that to a greater degree than for some other fighters, boxing was about relationships for him. Kevin Barry and Lou Duva were very big in his psyche and it appeared to me, as a journalist observer, that he did not adapt well to change,” Lampley said.
“When relationships changed, when things went bad with Kevin, when Main Events wasn’t as interested anymore, that really, really hurt David and it looked to me like it made boxing meaningless to him. Beyond that he’s an emotional guy that really didn’t have a ton of resiliency with which to get past the tougher moments in his career.”
And now nine years have passed since the loss to Lewis. That’s a lifetime to any athlete, but especially for a prizefighter.
It’s hard not to root for Tua now. Not just because we love old sluggers, but because we all can relate to what we could have been if things had gone differently, if we had made different choices.
That’s the fantasy, anyway.
“Now I believe I have just started my career, if anything,” Tua told the local press after obliterating Cameron. “So it was important for me to win this fight and win it well.”
He did that. He’ll never get back the wasted years or the missed opportunities. Those don’t come back, no matter how good your left hook is.
But for almost a round and a half he got to pretend he was on top of the world again.
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