Boxing: No doubt over who all little guys support

When David Tua steps into the ring tomorrow, he will strike a blow - hopefully a whole lot of blows - for the small guy.

It isn't that Tua is actually small.

It's just that he is dwarfed by his garguantuan opponent, Lennox Lewis.

There is no more hateful expression in sport than the glib claim that a good big guy will always beat a good small guy.

This premise always takes as its starting point the assumption that all other things will be equal, which, of course, they invariably aren't.

Let us hope they aren't in the case of the Tua-Lewis fight and that the little guy gets to win for once.

Looking at the two of them at the weigh-in one couldn't help noticing the size differential.

Lennox Lewis is, not to put too fine a point on it, a whopper. He is 6ft 5in and looks 9ft 6in. He weighs considerably more than Jonah Lomu and has a body like an overblown Greek statue.

By contrast, David Tua is a dumpy lump. He looks as if a large load of concrete fell on his head and compressed him out laterally.

If he says he is 5ft 10in he is not telling the truth.

Needless to say, he does say he is 5ft 10in, presumably on the premise that nobody who ever fought a heavyweight world title fight was ever that short, with the possible exception of Rocky Marciano and he, too, was a liar about his height.

Happily, in Rocky Marciano's case the little guy actually did win when it counted, and often against far bigger opponents.

All other things weren't equal where he was concerned.

Marciano came from a desperately poor Italian immigrant family in the Bronx with a fanatical will to win and an iron jaw.

He would be beaten almost senseless by his more stylish opponents, then suddenly explode all over them in the last few rounds.

Come to think of it, both he and Tua have much in common.

They are each of impecunious immigrant stock with a point or two to prove.

Tua, like Marciano, has been preparing for this moment all his life.

The revelations that his father used to challenge much bigger and older opponents on the street in downtown Apia in Samoa to fight his boy are the sort of stuff that novelists such as Bryce Courtenay have turned into bestsellers.

The build-up to this fight has had all the usual tawdry trappings, with bags of bravura from both the Lewis and Tua camps about what their man will do to the other.

Lewis might be much the bigger man with the more classical style, but it is the punching power and dogged determination of Tua that will determine the outcome.

In this particular fight it is the big guy who is going to be stalked by the little guy.

And if the little guy catches up with the big guy, gets past the elaborate defence, overcomes the huge reach disadvantage and starts to land some of the punches that he has been building up to all his life, then we may have a new world heavyweight champion representing the little guys from everywhere.

Tua sentimental favourite but short odds on Lewis

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.