Fists of a fighter, heart of a poet

David Tua at his gym, which has no name and no street number. Picture / Kenny Rodger

The last time I met David Tua was in a swanky penthouse. He was really quite famous then - and he was very much in the background. He seemed tense and shy. He had, and still does have, a reputation for being uncomfortable talking to the media. But I was there to interview his former great mate and manager, now long gone from Tua's life, Kevin Barry.

I interviewed Barry in a room away from Tua, but there was a cardboard cutout of the man we all knew as the Tuaman. "Where Barry is," I wrote, "Tua is too."

This week we meet Tua at his gym, which is in Onehunga and which, his cousin and mate and sort of minder, Inga the Winger Tuigamala, told me had no name and no street number. The gym is in a garage. The ring ropes have been salvaged from a tugboat; the wrapping tape is from The Warehouse. There is rust on a dumbbell.

The star of this low-budget show ambles in in a baggy checked shirt, lavalava and Jandals. Later he will kick off his Jandals. Perhaps, he suggests, somebody could auction them for him. "I need the money," he jokes. "I don't own a house but" - proudly - "I've got a garage."

He isn't really joking because he says he's broke and that for the past two years he has been living off "just love and family". He seems to be highly amused by this turn of events. He seems to be doing well on being broke. He looks, I tell him, relaxed and happy. This makes him laugh. "Ha, ha. It's the only way to be. So far I've experienced a lot of things, highs and lows and headaches and tears. My father always says, 'Hey, you might laugh with the whole world but you're going to wipe your own tears."

So although Barry is long gone and his name never mentioned, he's a presence in any interview with Tua as the boxer once was in any interview with Barry. I thought Tua might get uptight when I asked how that failed relationship has affected him. But almost the first thing he says is, "For two years I've been away from the game and I'm sure everybody knows the reason why." He talks a lot about those years, but you can't fail to notice that Tua never once says the name of the man whose son he is godfather to. Still, "It kills me, man. It kills me."

Everyone said, before I went off to meet Tua, that he'd be hard going. He has that reputation. People assume he's inarticulate.

Something has happened to him along the long, difficult way. Here's a guy who says that the hardest lesson he has learned in the past two years is the one about trust, yet learning it the hard way has made him more open. He is certainly more confident. He says he has always been a shy boy "and I still am in many ways." But less so now: "I think so. Probably. And part of that is maturing as a person and having the confidence to speak."

One of the other things that is often said about Tua is that he is too nice to be a boxer. "I'm a likeable guy. I'm sweet," he says, looking, really, as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "What is too nice? What does it mean? But the thing is I'm not faking it. I'm just being who I am."

He thinks it a real hoot to read what is written about him. Many people in his position wouldn't because much of it is doubting. "It's 'You're short, Tua. You put on weight. Your hair's too long. Your hair's too short.' It's choice. Everyone's entitled to have their own opinion and it's always easier to look in from the outside."

He doesn't worry about any of it. Not even when he reads that Tua can't do it, can't make a comeback - a word he really hates. Beyond that: "It's all good. It makes for interesting reading. Whoo! I can't believe this here's about me."

There is a tricky moment after the interview when Tua's wife, Robina, and Inga tell me they would like to see a copy of the story before it appears in the paper. The answer is no. It always is. "We're just trying to protect David," says Inga. I say, "I'm not out to hurt David." This is supposed to be a joke. The only person laughing is me, nervously. The way you do when there are big blokes who do boxing around.

The one thing other than the B-word you don't mention at the Tua gym is the hair. I almost forgot - and it would probably have been wiser to do so. But I say, blithely, after the interview, "Oh I forgot to ask you the most important question: what are you going to do with your hair for the fight?"

The really big guy, Billy, who almost broke my hand when he shook it, muttered in a vaguely frightening way something like "no hair".

But David Tua chuckles away, he is a very enthusiastic chuckler, and says he wasn't going to risk doing anything silly with his hair again. He took a lot of flak for it but more importantly, his mother wasn't keen on the wacky do he wore to fight Lennox Lewis back in 2000. He isn't going to risk her wrath - or her frying pan.

Tua's mother's frying pan, and her propensity to give her son a little whack over the head with it, is a running gag. Tua maintains a little scar on his scalp is a reminder that you don't mess with mum. For a taciturn guy, he's good at telling goofy jokes.

I think that he is somehow happier in his reduced circumstances. The hoopla of Vegas, the training at the Prince ranch with a tiger in the garden was "never me".

Of course, he might be rich again one day; he is back in court early next month. He says he has spent the past two years learning from his experiences, resting, reading court papers and writing poetry.

I say, "Read me some" and he says "Okay", settles back in his plastic garden chair and recites: "As a river meets the sea/so darkness overwhelms/but the morning breaks/reminiscing becomes vital when your beauty breaks my silence.

"Sweet? Sweeet!"

I have never quite been able to reconcile the smiling, genial Tua with the frowning, tough-guy boxer. And now he's gone all poetical on me. So I ask how he reconciles the two. Boxing, he says, "is a game but it's not really a game: it's suicidal. In boxing it's kill or be killed. All I can say to that is that once I cross the ropes, I become someone else. It's almost like you have to release the beast ... because you're in a mongrel sport. It's either you or the other guy." If he thinks about it too much, he thinks he might not be able to get into character.

But the everyday Tua, the one I'm sitting across from in a converted garage, is the one who uses "humble" like a mantra, who says, "At the end of day I am a simple man."

I'm not sure that he is. I think he is quite a complicated man who is good at playing a boxer. I am sure he is not a precious man. His minders might be worried about what will be written. Tua is just "excited. I can't wait. Is it in on Saturday?"

He has only the one request. Before I leave he really wants to know: "Did you like my poem?"