Tua has win, title shot in his plans

Dean Juipe

Thursday, March 27, 2003 | 9:31 a.m.

Compact, exceptionally strong and with an iron chin, David Tua has most of the assets it takes to become a heavyweight champion.

But the missing ingredient -- the ability to vary his attack and fighting patterns -- remains suspect as he goes into a major fight with Hasim Rahman as part of the Bernard Hopkins card Saturday in Philadelphia.

Tua, of Las Vegas, is 42-3 with 37 knockouts.

Rahman, of Baltimore, is a former heavyweight champion who is 35-4 with 29 KOs.

The winner will be positioned for a fight with International Boxing Federation champion Chris Byrd, also of Las Vegas. The Station casinos have Tua as a 9-5 favorite to defeat Rahman and advance to what would be a rematch with Byrd, who owns an earlier win against the transplanted Samoan.

"It's definitely a big fight for me," Tua said of meeting Rahman, which is also a rematch. "I want to fight for the world title one more time."

Tua was flat and completely dominated by Lennox Lewis in his previous championship fight.

"I really see a lot of potential in David Tua," said John Black, a Las Vegas gym owner and entrepreneur who worked as an assistant trainer in Tua's camp for five weeks before the latter's bout with Fres Oquendo last April. "He gets the maximum acceleration on his punches in a very short distance. He's fairly easy to tie up, but he has a quick first step and he can get inside although he has a tendency to stay outside.

"This is a critical fight, but there's no question he has world championship abilities."

Nonetheless, Black quit Tua's camp when he felt his efforts to improve the fighter's performance were being compromised by lead trainer Kevin Barry. Black also felt insulted by the treatment he received from both Barry and Tua's co-manager, Martin Pugh.

Black takes a scientific view of the sport and brings mathematical calculations into his fight plans.

"I prioritized and listed everything David needed to work on," he said. "I feel you need to submit a plan and then get the fighter to execute it, using the appropriate drills.

"I gave Kevin the information I had on David, which was very detailed, and it's my guess they took my e-mail and printed it and then decided they didn't need John Black."

Naturally, Black is curious about Tua and will be watching the HBO-televised fight with Rahman with considerable interest.

"I have mixed emotions," he said. "David's very nice, but he's very loyal to Kevin and Pugh and I have to say I don't care much for either of those guys."

Black said Pugh embarrassed him by asking for a foot massage as they were riding in a limousine, then compounded the insult by telling him "watch my bags" as Pugh went into a restaurant to eat.

As for Barry, Black said he felt the trainer was mishandling Tua in some respects and that he also would take portions of Black's game plans and pass them on to Tua as if they were his own.

"We got into some real arguments," Black said of his relationship with Barry. "He told me, 'You've got some very strong opinions.' And I told him that he was right, that I was 68 years old and didn't need to be wasting my time with him if they weren't going take my suggestions and implement them properly.

"They never paid me a nickel and I eventually told them to take a flying leap."

Nonetheless, Tua has won both of his fights since his association with Black, defeating Oquendo by ninth-round knockout in Chester, W.Va., and then stopping ex-champ Michael Moorer in 30 seconds Aug. 17 in Atlantic City, N.J.

In the Oquendo fight, however, Tua fell into an old trap: following his opponent around the ring and trailing on points until delivering a series of blows that ended the bout in his favor.

In many respects, that's what happened to Tua in his first fight with Rahman. That match, in Miami five years ago, had Tua trailing on the judges' cards through nine rounds before he landed a shot just after the ninth-round bell.

The referee neither penalized Tua a point nor gave Rahman additional time to rest, and when the fight resumed in the 10th round Tua pounced on Rahman and put him away.

"I was disappointed with the outcome of that fight because I didn't want it to end like that," Tua said.

He was less disappointed than Rahman, however.

"I don't feel he did anything in our first fight," Rahman said during a conference call. "The best shot he got was a foul."

Rahman, who has repeatedly shuffled trainers in recent years, comes into this fight off a loss in June to Evander Holyfield in Atlantic City. That ugly fight was stopped by the referee because of a head butt in the eighth round when Rahman's left eye was swollen shut, and Holyfield was awarded a split technical decision.

"I buckled down for this one and sharpened up," Rahman said of preparing for Tua. "He's going to hit me and I'm going to stand up to him.

"It's a winnable fight for me (and) the winner deserves a title shot."

Each man expects to weigh in the 240s for the bout, which is scheduled for 10 rounds.

Tua said he has been working on his vaunted left hook of late, which brought a chuckle from Black.

"He's already got a great left hook," he said. "There are some other things he should have been working on, like not getting into predictable patterns."