Boxing: Tua fighting fit for new beginning

David Tua will fight Shane Cameron weighing 105kg-110kg, significantly lighter than some previous bouts. Photo / Getty Images

David Tua is 36. He doesn't look it. As he moves across the training ring to shake hands, he looks like someone's bought him one of those body suits - you know, the ones in the movies which fit like a glove and which have bulging biceps, pumped pecs and rippling abs.

Only this is Tuaman, not Batman. He's 100 per cent pure Samoan beef; not Hollywood packaging. Tua is cut - and he knows it. He's feeling good about it.

Oh, he's still a squat heavyweight boxer. He'll never be able to train to a new height. But this seems to be a new Tua in almost every other respect. Old weight-gain David is gone. The American accent is largely gone, too. Tua seems a more together man, happy in his work; relaxed in his demeanour. Stalled career? That was then, this is now...

It's a dangerous sign for Shane Cameron, the New Zealand champion whom Tua will meet in the typically-boxing-hyped "Fight Of The Century" at Mystery Creek on October 3.

This version of Tua looks like the man who has knocked out more heavyweights in round one than anyone else, save for Mike Tyson. This version looks like the man who has never been knocked out himself. It'd be like hitting One Tree Hill. No visible impact.

Boxing has its own runaway hype machine. There are labels like "Fight Of The Century", press conferences, trash talking, face-to-face stare-downs and worse; gimmicks and mindless stuff most people with a brain rightly ignore. It is its own Achilles heel. Too much shinola and people stop listening to the hype; stop suspended-believing it.

Tua has been a bit of a victim of this in the past, even after the legal argument with his management team that effectively cut a large hole in his career and let the innards fall out of it.

He hasn't fought anyone of real note since his second fight with Hasim Rahman in 2003. Amid all the talk of a return, there has been mixed the weight gain, the legal troubles, the talk that didn't amount to much and comebacks that also didn't amount to much.

Tua suffered, too, in terms of perception. The high anticipation of the title fight against Lennox Lewis translated into letdown after Tua was comfortably beaten on points, seemingly without firing one of his renowned shots. Some thought he didn't really come to fight that night; that he was boxing for a purse; even though it was against one of the more skilled defensive heavyweights in history, and one with a pronounced reach and height advantage who understood how to fight Tua effectively.

He almost became a figure of fun. A cartoon published about the time of the Lewis fight showed Lewis standing next to Tua who had his sticky-up hairstyle hovering at Don King heights above his head. A bystander whispered: "What about the height difference?" His mate replied: "Tua's barber says, by the time of the fight, there won't be one."

Then there was the infamous "O for awesome" quote from Wheel of Fortune which Tua says he never said but which he is likely to be stuck with for the rest of his life. Add all that lot together, through all his management troubles and travails, what many thought was a faux US accent, becoming a bit of a parody of himself, and you can see how the Tua legend became a little less than legendary.

* * *

He's not bothered about all that now. Tua is surprisingly more relaxed, humorous and quietly intelligent than you expect. He still has that tendency, when asked a question, to embark on a parable that may or may not have relevance to the question posed. But he is the picture of confidence - real confidence, not the phoney boxing sort.

We talk about his weight, obviously the best it's been in years. His fitness trainer Lee Parore has clearly done a great job and Tua says this time, the change is "a lifestyle change, not just getting ready for a fight". This time, the diet and exercise will stay.

Why? Because of his boys, says Tua, his 14- and 11-year-old sons.

"I can't do all this and say to those boys: don't eat that; it's bad for you' if I am doing it myself and if I am living a certain way and asking them to live another. I am a father, a husband and a boxer and I have to live a certain way, especially if they are looking at me.

"If someone wants to know what I am really like, ask my wife and ask my two boys. They know who I am, probably better than I do, and that is why they are my first priority and that is why I try to be a good role model."

He isn't encouraging his sons into the ring. "Maybe if they want to do it but I have probably been discouraging them. So, if they wanted to one day, well, then I have said to them only if they really, really want to do it for themselves. Don't do it for me.

"It's a lonely life, being a boxer, a very lonely life. Yes, there are a lot of people around you and I have family and I have friends but you have to be so single-minded, selfish sometimes - you have to be very selfish.

"It means you cut people out of your life while you are focusing so hard. People understand, or they say they do, but they don't really understand what I do, day in and day out. It can make it hard [to maintain relationships with some people] and that's why I am doing my best to discourage my boys from boxing."

Tua the parent shows no signs of emulating his own father's unique style of introducing his son to the ring. A young David Tua, then still in Samoa, was made to fight bigger boys. If they landed a punch on Tua, his father (who then owned a convenience store) would reward them with a sweet. Tua's reward: he got the strap.

"I didn't really like boxing in those days and it was hard for me to understand my father's approach. I really didn't understand why he was pushing me so hard.

"Many, many years later, I asked him what all that had been about, because, man, I thought I must have been adopted or something to be getting all that punishment. I mean, I was only eight or nine. I had three brothers but they were never pushed that hard, so I wondered: Why me?'

"My father said it had been because he recognised that I had a special gift, more than my brothers, and that he had to be harder on me to bring that special gift out."

Tua recognises the logic and love in that statement, and is grateful, but has chosen a different path as a parent.

"It is a lonely life, boxing, in a sense you have to be prepared to die for something you believe in. That's why it has to be their choice, not something they do for me, or anyone else."

* * *

That makes it sound as if Tua has had enough of boxing; that he realises its limitations. Far from it. This is a renewed fighter, in more ways than one.

He grins when his good shape is mentioned, pleased with the obvious effect his appearance is having. Some knowledgeable boxing types say Tua hasn't been at his best weight since he fought Rahman in 2003 - 225 pounds (102kg).

"How old was I then - 13?" grins Tua. But he's been much heavier in many fights since then (he was almost two stone/over 10kg heavier than that when he fought Lewis), assisting the long, slow dissipation of credibility that leaked out of his career.

Trainer Roger Bloodworth says he thinks Tua will fight Cameron at between 105kg-110kg and doesn't think he should weigh any less.

"When you get a little bit older, boxers can't lose too much weight. It's counter-productive. They need that little bit extra - but not too much. He is in the best shape I have seen him for a very long time."

It hasn't just been fitness either. Tua is renowned as a puncher and for that famous left hook. His fights used to consist of him finding ways inside the defences of taller boxers and landing it. Nighty-night.

But he became one-dimensional with it and it was noticed that he had difficulty with taller boxers who could jab effectively, move well, attack him as he was moving in and cut down his hooking options. Defeat to a boxer like Chris Byrd and difficulty caused by others were used by Lewis to go to school on Tua.

He's working on that now, working on his ringcraft, punches thrown, variety. Cameron is not only a tough boxer, he knows the science of the sport. Tua wants to improve the odds. But it also goes beyond Cameron.

"I know that it all became about the left hook," he said of his former career. "That's all anyone saw. I was more than that but that's what I was taught then. I know about the importance of the jab, the importance of defence, fighting with both hands. Everything became about the hook and that's all I needed then, I thought."

Now he says he has worked on the rest of his repertoire.

"That's been very hard, you know, going back to the basics at this time of life. But it's been great. I have really enjoyed it."

He grins as he says this. "I have rediscovered the passion. Boxing was good but then [he waves a hand in the direction of his old career] I lost the passion a bit. I guess it became a bit of a job for me. I lost sight of what I liked about boxing."

What was that? "Well, I just loved it. I love it now. It is an honour to be boxing and a great honour to be able to go out there and do what I do. I have had to battle days when I have not wanted to get out of bed; when my shoulder hurt or something like that. "I have had to force myself; to train through the pain barrier; I had to look at myself in the mirror and ask if I was a quitter - and the only way you can keep on with it is if you love something. I call boxing my therapy and self-expression."

On paper, the words can seem obvious, almost trite. But delivered in person, with a grinning Tua clearly happy with his life, they suggest maturity and strength.

Tua is also addressing the rest of his boxing armoury because, after Cameron and almost regardless of the result, the US still waits. He knows he needs more than a left hook.

With the stalling of his career - "that was like the end of the beginning," he says, "this is a whole new chapter for me" - the fights dribbled away and he was overlooked when new boxers started up the ranks.

He was too dangerous, says Bloodworth. Younger men on the way up didn't want to fight even an older, less fit Tua, because he and that left hook could prove a real stumbling block in boxing's carefully planned career paths.

So his career drained slowly away but now there is wide interest in the October fight. Bloodworth says with this fight, and maybe one more after it, he thinks Tua's profile will be right for more big fights in the US. There are few credible heavyweight challengers around these days and 36 is not old for a heavyweight. Tua is still in the reckoning. Mystery Creek could indeed be a beginning.

Tua himself says: "Yes, I guess a title fight is where I'd want to go. But I am not constraining myself with long-term goals. I am focusing on what is real right now - this next fight.

"But I'd certainly like to be back in the ring in the US. I figure I have about four or five years left in me and that'll be it. So I can have a good run at it again. In a sense, I am happy with what I have achieved to date - but I am not satisfied."

Tua has fought and beaten several opponents who have either had or went on to have world titles - like Rahman, John Ruiz, Michael Moorer, Oleg Maskaev and others - but he has never claimed a big belt from any of boxing's alphabet soup of WBA, WBC, WBO, IBF and other organisations.

"If I can do that [fight again in the US; a title shot], it would be great. But if I get there and it doesn't work out," says Tua, "I can walk away happily and know I have honestly done my best. I feel good about that."

He seems ready to do his best.