Columnist Ron Kantowski: He won’t get Tua many chances

Friday, Aug. 17, 2001 | 10:29 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088. Regular columnist Dean Juipe has the day off.

David Tua wore Marine combat fatigues to Thursday's press conference hyping his heavyweight fight against Chris Byrd at UNLV's Cox Pavilion Saturday night.

I'm not sure that Sgt. Carter or Gomer Pyle -- much less any real Marine -- would have approved, based on Tua's performance against Lennox Lewis last November in their heavyweight championship fight at Mandalay Bay.

Given the way Tua pranced around the ring against Lewis, a tutu would have been a more appropriate outfit. Finding the 6-foot-5 Lewis more impenetrable than a Steve Wynn golf course, Tua, who stands 5-10 (but only when his hair is at full friz), threw few punches. He was outscored 117-111, 119-110 and 119-109 on the judges' scorecards.

Boxing fans scored it 120-0. Expecting so much more from the self-proclaimed Samoan warrior, they booed him unmercifully. To this day, Tua hears catcalls whenever he's introduced to the boxing public.

Tua's performance was so disgraceful that an official apology of sorts is included in his press kit.

"Of all the fans and the people who are accustomed to the way I fight, I cannot blame them for the way they feel," Tua said. "I know how disappointed and devastated they are. The same goes for me. I was the one in the ring with Lewis that night."

(Well, so much for my Evil -- er, Docile Twin theory.)

"I did not get the job done," Tua continues. "I was healthy. I was focused. I was strong. I just did not perform to the best of my abilities. I let my team, my family and myself down. That is on me. There is not much I can do now except ... fight as hard as I can against the best guys who are out there and hopefully show the real Tua."

Which begs the question: Will the real Tua please stand up, or just fade away from a blurry heavyweight title picture?

The 28-year-old "Tuaman," as his inner circle (actually, more like an outer circle, based on all the nutrionalists, masseuses and swamis that escorted him to Thursday's news conference) likes to call him, continued to fight like "Tuna Man" the last time out against Danell Nicholson. The lightly regarded Nicholson won three of the first four rounds until Tua put some coconut juice behind a left hook late in the fifth.

That his career has stalled is sad in a way, because virtually everybody in boxing wants to like the colorful Tua, if for no other reason than for the way he looks. Forget the combat gear, this is a guy who was made to walk around in a print shirt, baggy trunks and flip-flops. If you bumped into him at the Tropicana swimming pool, you'd immediately want to buy him a rum-and-Coke and punch him on the shoulder.

As per usual, his battalion of associates promise that the Tua that steps between the ropes at Cox Pavilion Saturday night will be a new-and-improved version of the old one. But redemption might not be so easy. Byrd, like Lewis and Nicholson, is considered a good boxer with enough skills and lateral movement to neutralize Tua's straightforward attack.

In other words, it could be like Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots, only without the Rock 'em or Sock 'em.

If that's the case, what remaining fans Tua has may try to knock his block off themselves.