DAVID TUA KO2 SHANE CAMERON

David Tua could be the fighter that the heavyweight division needs: exciting, hard-hitting and aggressive. He looked back to his very best in Saturday’s second-round demolition of Shane Cameron. This was the fast-starting, fast-punching and powerful Tua that had been missing in a few of his bouts before a two-year hiatus caused by legal issues with his former management.

Tua’s violent victory in New Zealand’s “Fight of the Century”, which I watched live on SecondsOutTV, was the highlight of the weekend.

I must admit that I thought Cameron could go some rounds and get knocked out sometime after the seventh. It was a lot quicker than that. Tua was not one whit slowed down by inactivity or weight loss (he apparently started training at almost 300 pounds but got down to a trim, for him, 237 pounds) and he showed the same urgency that he did in the one-round wins over John Ruiz and Darroll Wilson 13 years ago — and Michael Moorer a little more recently.

When Tua comes out like this, with fierce, fast pressure, looking to do damage, it is very difficult to keep him off.

Cameron seemed to have the right idea, moving, jabbing and throwing the right hand, but when Tua is in full cry he closes in quickly. Cameron’s reactions were too slow. Even before the first left hook landed it was obvious that Cameron was booked for a very early exit. When a left hook staggered Cameron towards the end of the opening round the fight was as good as over — he was gone. I knew Cameron’s chin was questionable, and it turned out to be much more suspect than I had anticipated, but that left hook would have hurt many heavyweights. The mismatch really should have been stopped after the first knockdown, but Cameron was allowed to get knocked down again before being sent back into the artillery barrage for seven more needless seconds of bombardment in round two.

The way Cameron crumbled reminded me of the night Tua stopped another Shane — Shane Sutcliffe. It was in Las Vegas, another second-round finish, although the Canadian Shane lasted a little longer than the New Zealand one.

Good-looking Sutcliffe, a rugged but limited heavyweight from British Columbia, came to Las Vegas accompanied by his stunning Quebec girlfriend. I remember the matchmaker Carl Moretti joking with Sutcliffe: “We’ll use you on our next show if you promise to bring your girlfriend.” The over/under betting proposition at the MGM Grand was 2.5 rounds. Sutcliffe bet $1,000 on the over. He told me: “I know I probably can’t win but I’m pretty sure I can go two and half rounds with him.” Like Cameron, the Canadian Shane started off by jabbing and moving, and briefly he seemed to be doing OK. He got through the opening round without going down or getting seriously tagged. Then he got caught by the left hook in the second.

“It was just like a shotgun blast,” Sutcliffe told me afterwards. “One moment I was on my feet and I knew what was happening, next moment I was on the floor.”

Tua still has that shotgun-blast left hook at 36, and I know I’m not alone in hoping it will not be too long before I have the chance to see him fire it again.

Notes from the weekend:

While David Tua provided the big hitting, gritty welterweight Antwone Smith was just as pleasing as I had expected him to be when wearing down and stopping Henry Crawford in nine rounds on ShoBox. There’s a throwback quality to Smith. He struggled to get past Crawford’s hand speed in the first two rounds but came on with relentless pressure and body punching. Many referees would have intervened when Crawford wobbled all over the place in the sixth; a knockdown late in the ninth had Crawford’s corner doing the right thing in retiring the shell-shocked fighter. Allan Green won clearly enough over Tarvis Simms in the main event but it was a pedestrian performance, very disappointing after the way Green had demolished Carlos De Leon Jr. in his last fight.

Britain’s Prizefighter heavyweight tournament provided the rattling good entertainment associated with this event. Ireland’s unheralded Coleman Barrett seemed on his way to an upset win over the much bigger Audley Harrison in the all-southpaw final only to get caught by big left-hand shots in round two. Barrett was fighting so strongly in the second round that he went from an opening price of +225 to -200 in the online wagering. It seemed to me that Barrett’s lack of experience was his undoing. He stepped away from a clinch with his hands down and either thought he was out of range or didn’t think Harrison would throw a punch. Harrison seized the moment and landed a big left hand on Barrett’s wide-open chin. There was some booing, but Barrett didn’t heed the “protect yourself at all times” dictum and paid the price. He never recovered, and when another big left sent him sliding down the ropes it was all over.