In the professional boxing world, there is such a "strange" boxer, his height is only 1 meter 75, but he is a heavyweight good. He has received a series of honors such as WBC International Heavyweight Gold Belt, USBA and World IBF Title Winner (1998), NABF and WBO Oceania and WBO Oriental Gold Belt, and he is David Tua, known as "Little Tyson".
Born in 1972, Tua is a small island country in the Pacific Ocean, a small country with its ancestral home in Samoa. Under the influence of his father, Tua began to practice boxing at the age of 8 and trained with his brother, the two often practiced together, but he was always able to beat his brother all over the body, showing a super talent for boxing. At the age of 10, Tua was a middleweight player, but won the junior heavyweight championship, mainly because he was invincible in the middleweight at that time, and no one could match the neck. In order to be able to participate in heavyweight boxing matches, he had to spend four hours eating binge and gain weight. In the game, the opponent is knocked to the ground in the first round. The following year he won the Youth Boxing Championship, becoming the youngest boxer to receive this honor.
At the age of 12, the Tua family immigrated to New Zealand and settled in Auckland, and he also had better conditions to train in professional boxing clubs. In 1989, at the age of 16, he won the Australian Boxing Championship. In 1990, Toua won a gold medal at the National Boxing Championships. In 1991, he won the World Cup and three New Zealand Junior Boxing Championships. From 1990 to 1992, he won the Oceania Championship. In 1992, Toua represented New Zealand at the Barcelona Olympics and won the bronze medal. Tua's amateur boxing era match record is 84-78 wins and 60 ko, quite a terrifying record.
After that, Tua turned to professional boxing, and in his 1992 professional debut, he koed a local boxer, and at this point, he began his own ko victory, ending the fight in the same way in 22 consecutive professional points matches. In 1996, Tua played against John Ruiz (25(17ko)-2-0) for the WBO International Gold Belt title, which ended with the first leg of the tournament ending with the familiar knockout ko, this time in just 19 seconds, and Tua easily won the international title.
One of Tua's most classic matches was in 1997, when he faced a Russian boxer, oleg maskaev, who was 1.91 meters tall, and the two fought fiercely to the 11th round, successfully knocking down their opponents and winning with ko. This game Tua perfectly explains how short players can fight against opponents with tall and long arms, which is definitely a textbook classic battle.
Since then, Tua has successively koked Mitchell Muller and Hassem Raman, who later won the heavyweight champion twice. Unfortunately, Tua's professional boxing career only had one world title battle experience, that is, on November 11, 2000, he challenged WBC, ibo defending boxer Lennox Lewis, when in the second round of the game, Lewis was almost knocked down, but in the end the two still played 12 rounds, Tua decided to lose the game, missed the world champion gold belt title.
After losing to Lewis, Tua had two more chances to challenge for the world title, the first being his match against Chris Bird, where the winner would be the IBF forced challenger, however he lost the crucial battle and the winner Bird got the chance to compete for the vacant IBF title and succeeded. Another time was in 2004, when he had the opportunity to compete for the WBO heavyweight title, but at that time he was in a lawsuit with the promoter, and this time the missing hand made him completely out of the championship title.
By 2013, the 41-year-old Tua was not dead set, and he wanted to try again, his goal was to challenge the then heavyweight first man Klitschenko, who, under the operation of the promoter, competed with Russia's giant boxer Ustinov for the WBA intercontinental title. Although the battle was played in Tua's home country, New Zealand, the whole game was in a passive situation, but due to Tua's heavy punch, Ustinov did not attack unscrupulously, and finally lost the big score of 12 rounds, this battle destroyed Tua's last hope, and announced his withdrawal from boxing after the game.
From 1992 to 2013, Tua's 21-year career in professional boxing played a total of 59 matches and won 52 victories, including 43 ko way wins, only losing 5 and drawing 2. For the small Tua, it is indeed not easy to break through the world in the heavyweight, but never touched the heavyweight world boxing champion gold belt, which may become his biggest regret when he retired.