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KING’S NEW KONG NIKOLAY VALUEV
“If People Take Me Seriously Or Not,
That Is Up To Them”
By Brian Doogan
(From The Ring, May 2006: On sale March 7)
Paul Gallico, the American novelist and New York Daily News columnist, once wrote about “the tale of the living giant, a creature out of the legends of antiquity who was made into a prizefighter and became the heavyweight champion.” It was, he insisted, the most “scandalous, pitiful, incredible story,” for Primo Carnera, the “Ambling Alp” from Italy who won the world title from Jack Sharkey and fought Joe Louis, was never anything more than “a fourth-rater at prizefighting … a helpless man among wolves who used him until there was nothing more left to use, until the last possible penny had been squeezed from his big carcass.” When he returned home to the village of Sequals, where he died alone, Gallico noted how “none of the carrion birds who had picked him clean ever came back to see him or to help him.”
Nikolay Valuev brought to mind the sad story of Carnera when he won the WBA heavyweight title from John Ruiz on December 17 in Berlin’s Max Schmeling Halle. At 7’ and 323 pounds, bearing an unnerving resemblance to Neanderthal Man, the 32-year-old Russian is Carnera’s natural successor, the tallest and heaviest titlist ever, a freak show for people to gawk at and guffaw. “Come one, come all. Watch Shrek box,” was how The Boston Globe, Ruiz’ hometown newspaper, characterized the fight, a spectacle on a par with the bearded lady at a three-ring circus. “The Beast From The East,” of course, had heard it all before.
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“I’m really not a beast,” he said with a self-conscious smile back in his hometown of St. Petersburg, where the snow fell gently outside. It was Christmas, and his six-year-old son, Grisha, moved excitedly around their small one-room flat, playing with his new toy, a battery-powered robot, while Valuev’s petite wife, Galya, stepped out lightly on her way to the shops. “I’m a very calm person. I never get really angry. As a child, I loved to go fishing with my father. I read Tolstoy and Agatha Christie novels. I even wrote poetry. I know what people say about me because of my size and because of how I look, but that’s not the way I am. The people who know me know I am a gentle person. I just happen also to like boxing.”
Beating Ruiz by a majority points decision made him the first Russian to lay claim to the splintered remnants of the richest prize in sport. “He’s the eighth wonder of the world,” cackled Don King, the promoter who now owns 50 percent of Valuev, along with his German promoter, Wilfried Sauerland, who first began working with Valuev in the summer of 2003, rescuing him from the obscurity of backwater town freak shows.
“As soon as I saw him I told him, ‘I think you can become a top contender, even a world champion.’ I had no doubt in my mind about this,” Sauerland reflected happily in the aftermath of Valuev’s victory, which was tarnished by its controversial scoring, the vast majority of ringside observers siding with Ruiz. “Because of his size, he had been promoted as a sideshow act. He went through many promoters and many managers. But I saw in him something different. I really believed that with effort and better training he had a serious chance of becoming a world champion. So we invested in him, paid good money for top sparring partners and the best training, and his potential began to reach fruition. There was great improvement in his boxing almost immediately and people no longer looked on him as a joke. I began to have to pay opponents three times what I would pay them to fight other boxers in the camp to get them to box Niko.”
For Valuev, the opportunity to gain acceptance felt precious, for he had always stood out from the crowd. His childhood, nonetheless, was happy. Born to a father who stands only 5’5” and a mother who is 5’4”, life in the former Soviet Union was not easy. Sergei Nikolaevich had a factory job, making radios, while his wife, Nadezhda Mixailovna, worked too, to make ends meet. It soon became apparent that together they had created a monster, a gentle giant who shared the same genetic defect that cursed Carnera, a pituitary gland problem that saw him grow to 6’7”—the same size as the enormous Wladimir Klitschko is today—by the age of 16.
“I have always been big, even when I was an infant,” Valuev explained. “I knew I was going to be very large when I became a man. The question was how large.”
Another question was how his size might best be utilized.
“I had a passion for sport, and it was suggested that I should try boxing, but I never dreamt of becoming champion or being rich and famous and having the chance to travel all over the world,” revealed Valuev, who had been a competent discus thrower and basketball player, having been sent to a sports boarding school. “I really did not think this could happen to me through boxing. The sport was popular in Russia and I began boxing in 1992. I was 20 and I wanted to do something active. I had about 13, 14 amateur fights, not many, but because of my size and strength I was able to become the Russian national championship silver medalist in 1993. At first, boxing was a hobby, but I decided to become a professional fighter quickly.”
A Goliath in gloves, Valuev was packaged as cruelly as Carnera once was. Most of his opponents were cannon fodder. One, American Gerald Nobles, was so unnerved when he came face-to-navel with Valuev at the weigh-in that he deliberately aimed blows to his behemoth opponent’s knees to get himself disqualified and out of there as quickly as possible. Others, such as Alexei Osokin, Evgueni Odolski, and George Linberger, were so intimidated that their escapes proved even less convincing. With a pawing jab and a telegraphed right hand, Valuev began to build a reputation. In little arenas in Sydney, Seoul, London, and Minsk, using his massive body to bully his fear-ridden foes, he was able to make a living by trading on the freak factor.
Then, with Sauerland’s guidance, he was maneuvered toward title contention, earning his big chance with a controversial majority decision against Larry Donald. The American made him look like the ungainly colossus he is when an opponent is able to move too quickly and too often, but, in the eyes of the judges, Donald did not do enough. “He was able to make it look, just by his sheer size, that he was hitting me when he wasn’t,” said Donald. “I never faced a man like him, ever. I’ve never seen a man like him either.”
When Ruiz got his first glimpse, he was pleasantly surprised.
“He’s not as big as I had imagined,” the 6’2”, 240-pounder said before the fight. “But he’ll be a big enough target. The hardest part of the night for me will be helping to get him up. He has a head the size of a Volkswagen. I won’t be able to miss.”
But Ruiz missed plenty, discovering in the ring that effective work was not so easily demonstrated against such a massive man and that Valuev’s sheer size created, at least in the eyes of the judges, an illusion of dominance. The Russian’s jab was not as ponderous as scouting reports had suggested it might be and his right hand, though it was a crude and always predictable weapon, had just enough dexterity to land and score from time to time. Valuev never punched his weight, which, at 323 pounds, was just as well for Ruiz.
“If People Take Me Seriously Or Not,
That Is Up To Them”
By Brian Doogan
(From The Ring, May 2006: On sale March 7)
Paul Gallico, the American novelist and New York Daily News columnist, once wrote about “the tale of the living giant, a creature out of the legends of antiquity who was made into a prizefighter and became the heavyweight champion.” It was, he insisted, the most “scandalous, pitiful, incredible story,” for Primo Carnera, the “Ambling Alp” from Italy who won the world title from Jack Sharkey and fought Joe Louis, was never anything more than “a fourth-rater at prizefighting … a helpless man among wolves who used him until there was nothing more left to use, until the last possible penny had been squeezed from his big carcass.” When he returned home to the village of Sequals, where he died alone, Gallico noted how “none of the carrion birds who had picked him clean ever came back to see him or to help him.”
Nikolay Valuev brought to mind the sad story of Carnera when he won the WBA heavyweight title from John Ruiz on December 17 in Berlin’s Max Schmeling Halle. At 7’ and 323 pounds, bearing an unnerving resemblance to Neanderthal Man, the 32-year-old Russian is Carnera’s natural successor, the tallest and heaviest titlist ever, a freak show for people to gawk at and guffaw. “Come one, come all. Watch Shrek box,” was how The Boston Globe, Ruiz’ hometown newspaper, characterized the fight, a spectacle on a par with the bearded lady at a three-ring circus. “The Beast From The East,” of course, had heard it all before.
FREE TRIAL!
London Publishing Co. now enables the readers of THE RING, KO, BOXING 2006, and WORLD BOXING to preview select articles well in advance of their publication dates. To allow you to get you acquainted with this service, these articles are available to thering-online.com visitors free of charge for a limited time only. In the future, this special service will be available only to subscribers of THE RING’S print edition.
To subscribe to THE RING and enjoy all the bonus benefits of thering-online.com, please click below:
Subscribe
[Note: We will notify subscribers how to receive their subscription passwords at a later date.]
“I’m really not a beast,” he said with a self-conscious smile back in his hometown of St. Petersburg, where the snow fell gently outside. It was Christmas, and his six-year-old son, Grisha, moved excitedly around their small one-room flat, playing with his new toy, a battery-powered robot, while Valuev’s petite wife, Galya, stepped out lightly on her way to the shops. “I’m a very calm person. I never get really angry. As a child, I loved to go fishing with my father. I read Tolstoy and Agatha Christie novels. I even wrote poetry. I know what people say about me because of my size and because of how I look, but that’s not the way I am. The people who know me know I am a gentle person. I just happen also to like boxing.”
Beating Ruiz by a majority points decision made him the first Russian to lay claim to the splintered remnants of the richest prize in sport. “He’s the eighth wonder of the world,” cackled Don King, the promoter who now owns 50 percent of Valuev, along with his German promoter, Wilfried Sauerland, who first began working with Valuev in the summer of 2003, rescuing him from the obscurity of backwater town freak shows.
“As soon as I saw him I told him, ‘I think you can become a top contender, even a world champion.’ I had no doubt in my mind about this,” Sauerland reflected happily in the aftermath of Valuev’s victory, which was tarnished by its controversial scoring, the vast majority of ringside observers siding with Ruiz. “Because of his size, he had been promoted as a sideshow act. He went through many promoters and many managers. But I saw in him something different. I really believed that with effort and better training he had a serious chance of becoming a world champion. So we invested in him, paid good money for top sparring partners and the best training, and his potential began to reach fruition. There was great improvement in his boxing almost immediately and people no longer looked on him as a joke. I began to have to pay opponents three times what I would pay them to fight other boxers in the camp to get them to box Niko.”
For Valuev, the opportunity to gain acceptance felt precious, for he had always stood out from the crowd. His childhood, nonetheless, was happy. Born to a father who stands only 5’5” and a mother who is 5’4”, life in the former Soviet Union was not easy. Sergei Nikolaevich had a factory job, making radios, while his wife, Nadezhda Mixailovna, worked too, to make ends meet. It soon became apparent that together they had created a monster, a gentle giant who shared the same genetic defect that cursed Carnera, a pituitary gland problem that saw him grow to 6’7”—the same size as the enormous Wladimir Klitschko is today—by the age of 16.
“I have always been big, even when I was an infant,” Valuev explained. “I knew I was going to be very large when I became a man. The question was how large.”
Another question was how his size might best be utilized.
“I had a passion for sport, and it was suggested that I should try boxing, but I never dreamt of becoming champion or being rich and famous and having the chance to travel all over the world,” revealed Valuev, who had been a competent discus thrower and basketball player, having been sent to a sports boarding school. “I really did not think this could happen to me through boxing. The sport was popular in Russia and I began boxing in 1992. I was 20 and I wanted to do something active. I had about 13, 14 amateur fights, not many, but because of my size and strength I was able to become the Russian national championship silver medalist in 1993. At first, boxing was a hobby, but I decided to become a professional fighter quickly.”
A Goliath in gloves, Valuev was packaged as cruelly as Carnera once was. Most of his opponents were cannon fodder. One, American Gerald Nobles, was so unnerved when he came face-to-navel with Valuev at the weigh-in that he deliberately aimed blows to his behemoth opponent’s knees to get himself disqualified and out of there as quickly as possible. Others, such as Alexei Osokin, Evgueni Odolski, and George Linberger, were so intimidated that their escapes proved even less convincing. With a pawing jab and a telegraphed right hand, Valuev began to build a reputation. In little arenas in Sydney, Seoul, London, and Minsk, using his massive body to bully his fear-ridden foes, he was able to make a living by trading on the freak factor.
Then, with Sauerland’s guidance, he was maneuvered toward title contention, earning his big chance with a controversial majority decision against Larry Donald. The American made him look like the ungainly colossus he is when an opponent is able to move too quickly and too often, but, in the eyes of the judges, Donald did not do enough. “He was able to make it look, just by his sheer size, that he was hitting me when he wasn’t,” said Donald. “I never faced a man like him, ever. I’ve never seen a man like him either.”
When Ruiz got his first glimpse, he was pleasantly surprised.
“He’s not as big as I had imagined,” the 6’2”, 240-pounder said before the fight. “But he’ll be a big enough target. The hardest part of the night for me will be helping to get him up. He has a head the size of a Volkswagen. I won’t be able to miss.”
But Ruiz missed plenty, discovering in the ring that effective work was not so easily demonstrated against such a massive man and that Valuev’s sheer size created, at least in the eyes of the judges, an illusion of dominance. The Russian’s jab was not as ponderous as scouting reports had suggested it might be and his right hand, though it was a crude and always predictable weapon, had just enough dexterity to land and score from time to time. Valuev never punched his weight, which, at 323 pounds, was just as well for Ruiz.
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