Steve Deane: How Maori TV's long game shortens Tua's prospects

Time and tide wait for no man, not even one with a devastating left hook.

That's what makes David Tua's withdrawal from his February bout with Bruce Seldon so disappointing.

Tua is 37. The clock is ticking.

After brutally clubbing Shane Cameron to his knees in October, Tua seemed once again to have the boxing world at his feet.

But instead of riding the wave created by their man's devastating flurry, the Tua camp have dithered.

By the time he fights Friday Ahunanya in March, six months will have passed since Tua's destruction of Cameron.

That six months has largely been filled with contradictory statements from Tua's promotor Cedric Kushner about the road the Tuaminator would travel to reach his destiny and be crowned heavyweight champion of the world.

Kushner first stated Tua would fight in New Zealand in December. He then said Tua's overseas popularity meant he would go on road to wow the world. And he wouldn't be fighting any bums like Ahunanya. All of which of course now looks a bit silly.

The constant misdirection has damaged Tua's stock. The public don't like being fed porkies. With no prospect of the leather flying again any time soon and Tua's latest revival looking every bit as uninspiring as it had been pre-Cameron, many folk sucked into the murky world of boxing by the Tua-Cameron fight will have long lost interest.

It's easy to paint Kushner as the villain in all this - but he is trying to make the best of a bad situation.

The real problem is Maori TV and the restrictive, cut-price TV deal to which Tua is beholden.

Kushner's hands are tied. With a limited pot of broadcasting money to make fights, finding credible opponents is all but impossible. And even if he finds one, or one is found for him - such as Ahunanya - why would Tua want to fight someone half dangerous for chump change?

As for Maori TV, they have been at pains to paint themselves as Tua's brown buddies and saviours.

In fairness, they were there with a cheque when he needed it. And from a commercial perspective, locking in Tua post-Cameron made a lot of sense.

Maori TV chief executive Jim Mather was utterly unrepentant when questioned by the Herald before the Cameron fight. The station had played the "long game" and would be in a strong commercial position if Tua defeated Cameron, he said.

Well, the reality is somewhat different.

The victorious Tua was a good commercial prospect but his value has been severely limited, somewhat ironically, by the shackles of his Maori TV deal.

If the deal hadn't been in place, Tua would have fought Hasim Rahman in Auckland last week and might well be eyeing Evander Holyfield as a warm-up for a second world-title shot. But megabucks fights can only be made with pay-per-view revenue.

Instead, Tua is inert. And every day he languishes, his stock dives a little further.

Maori TV are locked in a cycle where their determination to enforce a cut-price deal is ensuring Tua remains a cut-price asset, capable only of performing in cut-price events.

The main loser in all of this is Tua, who it has to be said didn't have a gun to his head when he agreed to the Maori TV extension in exchange for being allowed to fight Cameron on pay-per-view. Not a real gun, anyway.

He could have always walked away from a $500,000 payday for fighting Cameron. Some choice.

The end result was Tua, who has made it known his preference is to stay in New Zealand, being asked to set up camp in America for a month before heading to Atlantic City to take on an ageing one-time world champ like Seldon.

Seldon, who would have been a couple of days shy of 43, wasn't exactly the quality of fighter Kushner had promised. But, with his reputation for sitting down in the face of anything resembling mild ferocity, he was actually the perfect opponent for Tua, whose most pressing need is to get three fights over and done with to free himself from the Maori TV deal.

That said, you can hardly blame him for pulling out.

Tua's mother is sick. Faced with travelling to the US and training his butt off for a fight that would probably be over in flash and earn him precious little money or respect is hardly an attractive proposition.

Factor in a serious family illness and there's not even a decision to be made.

The result, however, is that Tua's comeback has stalled. The tide is going out and with each passing day it seems increasingly likely that the Throwin' Samoan's undoubted talent will end up stranded by his advancing age, that the dream won't even be attempted, let alone fulfilled.

That could be the ultimate result of Maori TV's long game.