TUA GIVES MOORER A 30-SECOND NIGHTMARE

Too often, David Tua gives away rounds while looking to land one big punch, so that his fights become cliff-hanging affairs. But when he puts his mind to it, Tua is a destructive force from the very first bell. He put his mind to it at the Trump Taj Mahal casino resort in Atlantic City on 17 August, and out went two-time champ Michael Moorer in just 30 seconds of a scheduled 10-rounder before a crowd of 4,471 and a Home Box Office television viewing audience in the States.

Coming as it does after Tua’s behind-on-points, ninth-round victory over Fres Oquendo in April, the sudden and conclusive KO puts the squat, 29-year-old Samoan right back in the front rank of the heavyweight division.

Tua was the favourite at 3-1 on but many thought that this would be a competitive fight. There were those in the game who picked Moorer to win or at least — such as Moorer’s old trainer, Teddy Atlas — gave him an excellent chance of pulling off the upset. Not many could have anticipated a blowout, with Moorer landing just one punch (according to the CompuBox statistics). But John Hornewer, the Chicago lawyer who represents IBF mandatory contender Chris Byrd, was one who told me before the fight that this would be an early evening for Tua. As far as Hornewer was concerned, the first time Tua hit Moorer it would be all over. He was exactly right.

But there had been disquieting ripples on the surface of the deep and sometimes unfathomable pool of Moorer’s psyche.

The 34-year-old left trainer Freddie Roach’s gym in Los Angeles about three weeks before the bout to return to his old haunts in Detroit, where his former mentor, Emanuel Steward, helped him in the final stages of training.

For public consumption, Moorer had returned to Detroit’s Kronk gym to try to recapture some of the old magic. In fact there had, I understand, been a typically moody outburst from Moorer in Los Angeles. Trainer Roach would not say anything derogatory about the fighter when I spoke with him on the phone a few days before the bout. Of Moorer’s walkout, he just said: “That’s Michael.” But longtime Moorer watchers could sense that the fighter must have been troubled in some way — perhaps in a way that made sense only to Moorer himself.

Freddie Roach was in the corner on fight night but in our phone conversation it had seemed to me, more from what the trainer didn’t say than what he did say, that he was not exactly super confident that Moorer would have a good night.

Emanuel Steward, doing the expert analysis for HBO, also was guarded in his words.

In the pre-fight preamble, he told viewers that Moorer was going to be in danger for the whole 10 rounds. There was nothing upbeat in Steward’s message. He didn’t say, for instance, that Moorer had a new focus, or that he had looked good in the gym, or anything at all, in fact, of a positive nature.

Steward had the air of a man who had his mind made up that if he could not say anything good about a fighter to whom he was once close, then he was not going to say anything bad about him, either. His comments were what you could describe as neutral, but there seemed a certain sadness about Steward, who I believe has one of the all-time great boxing minds, as if he knew what was about to happen.

Those who believed Moorer would win (and there were some good judges, but to spare blushes I won’t name names), thought that his southpaw style could confound Tua, that the stiff right jab from the southpaw posture could keep the shorter man at bay, that while Tua waited to land a big punch, or simply tried to figure his man out, Moorer would be putting rounds in the bank.

According to this scenario, Tua would simply run out of rounds and be outpointed.

I could see the possibility of something like this happening. But I have also seen Moorer knocked down and staggered often enough to know that just one direct hit from Tua might well be all it took.

My thinking was that Tua would do one of his patient, stalking jobs, giving his manager/trainer Kevin Barry grey hairs while the heavy-handed fighter waited and waited for the one-hit opportunity. It looked to me like a Tua win around the eighth.

But Kevin Barry, training Tua for the third time (a knockout over trial horse Garing Lane in a low-profile fight last December, then the win over Oquendo) had told me beforehand that he had been working on Tua throwing more punches and with greater variety — and earlier in the fight — than we had seen in recent appearances by the Tuaman.

And that was just what Tua did.

As to Moorer’s southpaw stance, Barry was not too worried, he said, because Moorer is a flat-footed sort, not a tricky, slippery mover in the Chris Byrd manner.

While Byrd was able to frustrate Tua, move around him and pepper him, Barry did not envisage that sort of problem with Moorer. He felt that Moorer would be in front of Tua, and hittable.

As for Moorer’s noted right jab, Barry had told me before the fight: “Don’t write this, please, because we don’t want to give too much away, but I can tell you that David has absolutely been smashing his way past the jab of our southpaw sparring partners.”

So Tua was up for the job, he had the right game plan, and he delivered. And how.

Moorer looked tentative and ill at ease, and Tua went straight to him and backed him up with the right hand to the body. Then a left hook landed on Moorer’s shaven skull and the southpaw did what he absolutely should not have done: backed straight up into a corner. Moorer stuck out a jab, threw a right hook that missed, then got caught by a right hand on top and his legs caved in. Even as Moorer was sinking, Tua hit him with a left hook, then threw a right that whistled over Moorer’s head. Moorer sagged on to the bottom rope and hung there, half in, half out of the ring, glazed eyes looking up at the ceiling. Referee Rudy Battle had no need to count him out. It was over. Just like that.

In a way it was deja vu, bringing to mind Tua’s 19-second knockout over John Ruiz in this same seedy seaside gambling resort in 1996.

We all know that Tua can knock out fighters late. Now we have been reminded that he can also knock them out early — very early, come to that.