Columnist Dean Juipe: Lewis feasts as Tua dines on crow

Dean Juipe

Monday, Nov. 13, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Proximity played a role in many Las Vegans believing David Tua had a chance to upset Lennox Lewis when they fought for the heavyweight championship Saturday night.

Proximity?

Yes, in the sense that Tua has been living here for a year and that seemingly hundreds of favorable stories have been written about him. He's a great interview and an interesting character, and, as a result, it was tempting to believe him when he said it was his "destiny" to win the heavyweight title for his native Samoa.

Conversely, Lewis was thousands of miles away in England, not in recluse but certainly out of our everyday reach.

Yet when the time came to fight at Mandalay Bay, it was Lewis who was out of Tua's reach.

What was potentially a great fight was reduced to second-rate status not only by Tua's physical disadvantages in height and reach, but by his unwillingness to charge into Lewis and throw a few uppercuts.

On a worldwide stage for the first time in his career, Tua may not have been frightened but he was immobilized. Lewis picked him apart as if he were nothing more than an entree at a scrumptious luau.

The damage to Tua extends beyond his bruised face and extends to a dinner of crow.

Not that credibility is widespread in boxing, but Tua's credibility is shot. All of his talk of his warrior ancestry and his assurances of victory began ringing hollow as round after round passed and he did little or nothing to alter the scenario.

At some point he should have taken a page from the Mike Tyson book of tactics and forced his way to Lewis' chest, thereby eliminating the bigger man's cushion. But Tua was standoffish to an extreme, given the basic premise that you have to clearly beat the champion to be given a decision over the champion.

Tua, it turns out, is no Tyson.

And therein lies part of Tyson's appeal. Unlike Tua, he would not have taken that type of repetitive round-after-round beating without trying something different (or outlandish).

He would have ditched the passivity and gotten dangerous. That's why he gets the big bucks.

Tua's lack of initiative must have come as a crushing blow to his countrymen and supporters, to say nothing of his promotional firm, America Presents. But it was a bad night for the latter all the way around, as it not only lost out on the millions of dollars a Tua victory would have meant, it had two other fighters on the card and both of them lost.

Their flag has slipped to half-mast.

Lewis' is flying high, the result of three excellent 2000 outings and a renewed belief that he is clearly the best heavyweight in the world. After the fight he promised to stay in the game "for the long haul" with the goal of "building my legacy."

Those who saw him keep Tua in his place were impressed. Maybe they didn't like the fight's lack of concerted action or that it appeared to follow a scripted pattern, but that was Tua's fault.

Lewis did precisely what he should have under the circumstances.

He proved, as trainer Emanuel Steward suggested, that a good big man will beat a good smaller man almost every time.