The Heavyweight Issue

Ladies and gentlemen, vintage David Tua:

Whenever I watch that classic 19-second destruction of John Ruiz, I lament about the heavyweight division nowadays.

Heavyweight action has always driven the sport.  The characters, the rivalries, the trash-talk, then backed by high-quality, intense, exciting fights--the public has always loved that stuff.  And the heavyweights always provided that stuff.

Today we don't have exciting heavyweights.  Not like the Tua's or the Ali's, or the Jack Dempsey's:

Dempsey's opponent, champion Jess Willard had never been down before this fight.  Dempsey was a monster, and for that everybody loved him.  He later had two fights against Gene Tunney--a quick moving boxer, as opposed to a swarmer like Dempsey--both of which he lost.  Even so, the public much preferred Dempsey.  Heavyweight knockout artists are awesome.

We had every reason to believe that Klitschko vs. Haye a few weeks ago would be a return to classic heavyweight form.  The fight was being built up years ahead of time.  The trash talk was incessant.  The crowd in Germany was as wild as any boxing crowd has ever been.

David Haye was supposed to knock out Wladimir Klitschko.  Instead, he barely touched the Ukrainian ring legend, losing in a heavily one-sided and ever-boring fight.  And he blamed it on a broken pinky toe afterwards.

This is what we're dealing with now.  We need a big change in heavyweight boxing.  We need excitement.

Until then, here's some more David Tua:

KTFO.

-JD