Tua to fight five times in 2010

By Boxing News - 12/21/2009 - Comments

Image: Tua to fight five times in 2010By Jason Kim: 37-year-old David Tua (50-3-1, 43 KO’s) plans on fighting five times in 2010, according to Radio New Zealand News. Tua recently canceled his February bout against Bruce Seldon. Tua’s next fight is scheduled against Friday Ahunanya. This will be interesting to see if Tua can actually fight five times in a year. Tua has only fought six times in the past three years, and only once in the past two years. It’s nice that he has finally decided to move forward with his career and get busy. However, it remains to be seen whether or not Tua can actually get in the ring as many as five times in a year.

Tua is hoping to get a title shot in the next year, which appears to be very unlikely unless he’s referring to one of the little know belts. The Klitschko brothers are going after bigger names and have mandatory challengers they have to fight, and World Boxing Association David Haye has a fight against John Ruiz coming up and other options beyond that. For Tua to get a title shot in that short of a time frame, he would need to beat some good fighters in an impressive fashion, not just B and C class fighters. In his last bout, Tua defeated New Zealand native Shane Cameron by a 2nd round knockout.

It was a good win for Tua. However, Tua needs to fight better opponents than Cameron and Ahunaya if he wants to get the boxing public’s interest. It’s been six years since Tua last fought a good 1st tier fighter. He fought to a 12 round draw with Hasim Raham in 2003. Since that time, Tua has fought strictly B and C class fighters until recently when he beat Cameron, a fringe contender.

In November 2000, Tua lost a lopsided 12 round decision to Lennox Lewis in a failed attempt to capture the IBF/WBC heavyweight titles. Tua did very little in that fight and seemed gun shy. The next year, Tua was defeated by Chris Byrd in a 12 round decision.

A positive that came out of Tua’s last fight was his weight. Tua came into the fight weighing a trim 237, and was able to throw good combinations like he had in the early part of his career. He looked very good in putting his punches together against Cameron. This was something that was missing in the past five or six years, a time when Tua was throwing only one punch at a time and not throwing combinations.



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