Boxing: Bring it on! Now is Tua's hour

By PETER JESSUP

LAS VEGAS - The world is in front of David Tua as he goes for Lennox Lewis' two title belts in Las Vegas tomorrow.

It will be a simple fight - Tua has to use his devastating punching power to force Lewis on to the back foot, then drive under Lewis' left jab and up. He will get hit doing that because Lewis has such a superior reach advantage.

It comes down to how much and how hard Tua gets hit, especially early, and how much he can deliver when he does get inside.

If he can't get inside, Lewis will win on points - you have to knock the champion down and out to lift world titles.

Some pundits predict the most boring fight for a long time. They expect Lewis to stand and jab all day, holding the left out to defend, and continually retreating. Everyone, including Lewis, knows he can ill-afford to mix it with the shorter, stockier, more powerful Samoan-New Zealander.

Others reckon it will be a remake of the Thrilla in Manila, the Don King-produced Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight in 1975. Their view is that Tua is the man to restore credibility to the game after years of mis-matches, bad behaviour in the ring and corruption outside it.

Lewis is the better boxer, Tua the better fighter.

Expect Tua to come out raring to go, to be straight out of his corner and into Lewis' face, to try to unsettle the champ and let him know there's a new kid on the block.

Both fighters are sure to go hard in the opening exchanges to try to establish an early lead in the intimidation stakes. A very early knockout is not beyond possibility.

But both can take a fearsome punch. The likely scenario is that Lewis will settle into his pattern of holding the shorter man at arms' length while waiting for points-scoring bangs. This may work for rounds one and two and I would expect Lewis to be ahead after two.

By round three Tua should be starting to work out where and how to get inside the jab. By round four he should have achieved that a few times, or he will receive something hard and heavy.

Lewis is unlikely to have ever been hit as hard as he will be when Tua delivers with his full bodyweight. He carries uncanny power. When it lands, Lewis' eyes will pop the way Robert Daniels' did, like Obed Sullivan's did.

If Tua can land and damage Lewis, the bigger man has two responses. He will lean on Tua, hold him, try to smother him, and he will start going backwards to avoid the pain because he has always been a very cautious fighter.

But no-one fights well going backwards.

Certainly you can't knock opponents out while backpedalling. Lewis, when hurt, tends to go into a two-punch-and-retreat routine. Tua won't stop coming at him. It's an intriguing prospect.

Styles make fights, as the old saying goes, and the styles on offer here are in some ways complementary, in others not.

If Lewis smothers, Tua's best option is to keep punching to the body. If Lewis holds Tua's head with the left in order to line Tua up for his knockout right, as he did against Michael Grant - an action that could have had Lewis disqualified - Tua's best option is to trade illegalities with an Andrew Golota special - a blow below the belt.

If Tua loses, he is unlikely to drop out of the top-10 world rankings. If it's a points decision he has to get a rematch. If it's a close decision to Lewis, the likelihood is a Tua-Evander Holyfield clash.

Holyfield wants his other title back, but Lewis has said he does not want to fight Holyfield again. What he wants is a huge moneymaker against Mike Tyson.

Either way, win or lose, Tua will likely fight both men within the next 12 months.

Herald Online feature: the Tua fight

The Herald Online is ringside for the countdown to David Tua's tilt at the world heavyweight boxing title. Reporter Peter Jessup and photographer Kenny Rodger bring you all the news, inside information and pictures, leading up to this Sunday afternoon's showdown in Las Vegas.