Boxing: A home fit for a winner

The Herald's PETER JESSUP takes an exclusive look inside world heavyweight contender David Tua's training ranch near Las Vegas.


The Prince Ranch, where David Tua is preparing for his world title fight with Briton Lennox Lewis, is a fantasyland straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson drug-fuelled dream.

Along with the secluded boxing gym that attracted the Tua camp come a nuclear attack shelter, wild animals including a lion and tiger and bedrooms the size of football fields.

The house is so big that Tua, his manager, Kevin Barry, trainers Ronnie Shields and Barry's brother Brian, chef Billy Stratham and others in residence communicate by walkie-talkie in a kind of big boys' military exercise.

"It's like a comedy show," says Kevin Barry, rattling off the call-signs each has.

Tua is Black Pearl, Barry is Junior Bear (his dad's name is also Kevin), Brian is Big Bear. Chef Stratham, a Fijian, was Black Bear until Tua said that was politically incorrect.

"I told him we'd have to stop calling him Black Pearl if that was the case and just drop it to Pearl.

He said "You just keep calling me Black Pearl."

It's a sign of the ease with which the whole crew is taking the buildup to the biggest payday in New Zealand sporting history - more than $US4 million ($9.8 million) guaranteed regardless of the outcome - when Tua fronts up to Lennox Lewis at the Mandalay Bay casino on Saturday, November 11 (Sunday, November 12, NZT).

But the measure of how seriously the work is taken is shown by Shields' call-sign, No Mercy Bear.

The Ranch was built during the 1970s and looks to be the product of a mixture of fantasy and paranoia.

One large room is built back into the dirt bank and is covered by two metres of concrete and earth to provide a shield from nuclear attack. Around the lounge ceiling are dancing platforms where go-go girls were to perform. The house has numerous kitchens and toilets, but only four bedrooms - albeit the biggest bedrooms you've ever been in.

The entranceway is so big it easily houses the Tua team's table tennis table - as a measure of the big boxer's speed, he is top dog in the team championship.

Tua's room has a karaoke machine so he can indulge his love of singing, a 50-inch television, a bed and scales.

Roman busts adorn the walls.

The ranch's new owner, Greg Hannley, is a car enthusiast who bought the place to turn it into a car museum. But a boxing-related friend suggested it would make an ideal gym, and the idea took off.

The only car on show is a 1965 Excalibur two-seater sports convertible once owned by Sammy Davis jun. Barry and Tua take spins around the ranch in it.

Fight posters, most of them signed, adorn the walls - Muhammad Ali, Marvin Hagler, Rocky Marciano, Mike Tyson.

Also on the wall is a copy of a cheque from promoter Don King to Tyson, dated August 19, 1995, and for $US25 million.

Slogans are prominently displayed to remind Tua and everyone else how Tyson got the money. "Speed and power equals KO, Power and speed equals KO, Destiny plus will equals KO," wrote Tua himself on a whiteboard.

Printed and plastered to the wall are, "To perform like a champion you must practise like one," and "Winners are simply willing to do what losers won't."

Most of Tua's time is spent at the camp, apart from occasional trips to Las Vegas about 25km south for promotional work.

The Ranch is 350m higher than Vegas, so is cooler than the city, and close to the mountains where Tua has been doing altitude work.

He is a big star in Nevada.

And interest is coming from New Zealand, too.

The Land Transport Authority wants him to star in a "buckle-up" campaign, and he was only too happy to do so without charge when he saw the figures showing how many Polynesian children are injured in crashes - 14 times the national average.

A Kiwi support campaign is to be launched in Aotea Square on Sunday, October 29, by which time TV3 will be pushing the fight telecast, 15 Auckland buses will have been painted black and carry Tua's image, and schools will be receiving posters.

But Kiwi support will be scattered at the Mandalay Bay casino.

Barry wanted to block-book seats so fans flying in for the fight could provide concerted backing for the South Pacific champ.

But Lewis' handlers appear to have had a hand in the arrangements, because the Kiwi seating has been broken into well-separated sections.

"It will be our turn to have the say next time," says Barry, confident Tua will be the defending champion for his next fight after Lewis.

Tickets prices range from $US300 to $1300, and all are sold.

Ringside seats are going for much more, and the casino has bought a block to give to high-rollers and sports and movie stars.

The celebrity audience list hasn't been announced yet, but boxing stars ranging from Tyson and Evander Holyfield to former greats such as Ken Norton and Ali are said to be coming.

Actor Bruce Willis and golfer Tiger Woods have also been mentioned as possible spectators.

Lewis, meanwhile, is preparing at altitude in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, where trainer Emmanuel Steward says the 35-year-old is working harder than ever before.

The Tua camp has heard that Lewis has a specialist conditioner working to strengthen his abdominal muscles - if true, a sure sign Lewis expects Tua to go for body shots to try to open him up and overcome the height difference.

Lewis will be in Vegas for the weigh-in three days before the bout.