Columnist Dean Juipe: Tua fails to emulate man he beat

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001 | 10:36 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.

It was 53 weeks ago in Las Vegas that Lennox Lewis all but toyed with David Tua, disposing of the would-be heavyweight champion with a precision that was calculated if not breathtaking.

The one-sided bout didn't challenge the judges or the crowd, which eventually became disenchanted with Tua's lame performance.

The oddity, especially in retrospect, is that Tua had been pegged as the "best of the rest" and that he, and perhaps he alone, was thought to have had the goods to make a fight of it with Lewis. After all, among the victories Tua could claim was one over Hasim Rahman.

Now here we are with Rahman having upset Lewis last April and fighting him again Saturday at Mandalay Bay, while Tua shuffles from trainer to trainer and tries to bounce back not only from the loss to Lewis but one to Chris Byrd.

As we all know, there is no correlative ability in sports. Simply because Tua beats Rahman and then, in turn, is overwhelmed by Lewis, does it mean that Rahman will be crushed by Lewis, if you follow the logic.

Likewise, the fact that Rahman also lost to Oleg Maskaev and was hit hard by Corrie Sanders -- two men only slightly better than average -- doesn't disqualify him from becoming the heavyweight champion.

"Maskaev opened my eyes ... and humiliated me," Rahman said. "He changed my work ethic and mental state."

Adding that Maskaev, who is 21-4 and headlining a Nov. 30 card in Reno, "seems to be on a downslide since he fought me," Rahman brushes off the defeat as one of those vaunted "learning experiences." And as for the loss to Tua, which occurred under questionable circumstances given the inexperienced referee and the late punch that ended the bout after the 10th round, Rahman is confrontational.

"The record may say otherwise, but I'm content that I beat him," he maintains. As for Tua's status in the sport today, Rahman said "he's not even a factor."

Which may be Tua's own fault.

"I'd love to train David Tua," said John Black, a local gym owner and an absolute authority on the science of boxing. "There are a lot of things he needs to learn to do and he has the physical abilities to do them.

"He needs a greater variety of lead patterns. He kept doing certain things over and over against Lewis and Byrd and they weren't working."

Black has had a couple of lengthy meetings with Tua's manager, Kevin Barry, without coming to the agreement he so keenly desires. With Joe Goossen out as Tua's trainer, apparently by mutual decision, the Las Vegas-based Samoan may be doing little more than continuing in his clueless ways.

The bottom line in boxing is that few, if any, fighters go undefeated and many of those who achieve success do so because of the gains they made coming off a defeat.

The clean, eighth-round knockout Rahman suffered to Maskaev elicited a surprisingly positive reaction from the loser. It spurred him to reach his full potential and become the heavyweight champion.

He responded positively at a make-or-break point in his career.

Tua, it seems, is not inclined to do the same.