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The Cyber Boxing Zone Newswire
November 11, 2000

Bruno on Boxing
By Joe Bruno--Former vice president of the Boxing Writers Association.

Leery Lennox Lewis wins tedious 12-round decision over slack Samoan David Tua. Pay-per-view suckers get screwed again.
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Oh the humanity!

All right. It’s not exactly the human bleeding of the Hindenburg I’m bemoaning. But rather the duping of perhaps 400,000 dolts who’s bank books bled their hard-earned cash, buying the disgrace HBO dumped on it’s pay-per-view customers Saturday night.

After witnessing the most tedious event since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault, a former TV boxing executive told Mike Katz of Houseofboxing, "This was another dull fight that tells the public it isn't worth spending $45 or $50 for a pay-per-view fight."

But the question here is: “When is the dim-witted public going to figure that simple fact out for themselves?”

Watching Lewis’ near shutout 12-round decision over Tua was as boring as watching Al Gore’s hair coloring dry. Maybe worse. Lewis proved again that a good big man will always beat a good short man. But shouldn’t a fighter, who wants to be mentioned in the same breath with heavyweight greats from the past, put on a better show against a muscular troll with only one hand and more than three heads of hair?

It was obvious from the first round that Tua had no chance of getting anywhere near Lewis’ head with his predictable left hook. For the entire 12 excruciating rounds, Lewis was content doing his slow-motion imitation of Muhammad Ali; flicking out a feather-like left jab and hopping backwards around the ring like an overweight giraffe trying to avoid the lurches of an overfed rhino.

According to Compubox, Lewis was credited with landing 300 punches to 110 for Tua. But of the punches Lewis landed, 213 were jabs, no harder than a flick of the wrist needed to swat away a harmless fly. Of Tua’s 110 landed punches, only a handful landed with any affect. And when they did, Lewis commenced his hasty retreat.

The official scorecards did not indicate the one-sidedness of the bout. (Sorry. I won’t call it a fight) Judge Chuck Giampa scored it 118-110, judge Dave Moretti scored it 119-109 and judge Jerry Roth scored it 117-111. The CBZ had it 118-110, 10-2 in rounds for Lewis.

After the fight, a dejected, but surprisingly calm Tua told the press, "I did the best I could." And "Thank God no one got hurt."

Obviously, Tua wasn’t thinking about the paying fans.

Before the fight, Lewis told the press, "If you come to war, you have to bring your whole arsenal. Not just a left hook and a haircut."

What Lewis didn’t know was the left hook and the haircut was Tua’s entire arsenal. We all now that now.

After the fight, Lewis said we had just witnessed a virtuoso performance of “boxing-ology.” I say we saw an appendectomy, where $44.95 was surgically removed from the pockets of anyone dumb enough to buy this crap in the first place.

A wise man (wiseguy?) might say Lewis fought a masterful fight, doing just what he needed to do to win, without taking any undue risks. I say, if people are paying big bucks to see a heavyweight champ defend his title, they’re entitled to some excitement, and a concerted effort by the champion to do what all great champions do -- try to separate his opponent from his senses, thereby knocking the sucker out.

People don’t pay $44.95 to see a bad imitation of Fred Astaire.

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