Forget David and Goliath. For most movie fans watching the heavyweight title fight between David Haye and Nikolai Valuev on Saturday night, the first mythical conflict to spring to mind was Rocky and Drago. Not since the 1985 showdown between Sylvester “Adrieeennnne!” Stallone and Dolph “pretty boy” Lundgren have we seen such a mismatch of plucky Western underdog and Eastern bloc fighting machine.
Admittedly, you have to make some allowances. Like the fact that Haye is British, not American. And Valuev’s training routine probably didn’t involve working out in a top secret muscle lab while Soviet technicians monitored his readouts, but he was praised by Vladimir Putin as a “national hero,” so there’s at least a frisson of cold war tension.
Nor could you mistake him for a male model like Lundgren. But with his hulking 220cm, 146kg frame, cro-magnon facial features and prodigious body hair, Valuev is surely the stuff of fantasy rather than reality.
Haye himself had similar thoughts, if a different set of movie metaphors.
“I have watched Lord of the Rings and films with strange-looking people, but for a human being to look like he does is pretty shocking,” said the Hayemaker in a typically offensive pre-match build-up, going on to mock his body hair and odor. Talk about adding insult to injury.
So as Valuev tends to his battered ego and torso he could do worse than take Haye’s words at face value: Get a career in the movies, Nikolai! You’ve got what it takes.
Hollywood has always had room for former sports stars — from Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Vinnie “mate of Guy Ritchie’s” Jones. That mix of athleticism and public recognition is the raw meat Tinseltown’s dreams are made of.
Valuev is already close in physiognomy to renowned screen giants such as Richard Kiel or Andre “The Giant” Roussimoff. Kiel (also 220cm) became a household name as James Bond’s ultimately cuddly nemesis Jaws; Roussimoff (a mere 215cm) graduated from the wrestling circuit to movies like Conan the Destroyer and The Princess Bride. But both have retired, leaving the market wide open. And surely nobody could fill that gargantuan hole like Valuev right now.
The roles practically line themselves up: Frankenstein’s monster, Lurch from the Addams Family, the Incredible Hulk. There are no more Lord of the Rings movies but there must be room for him on the forthcoming Hobbit. And he’d be the perfect successor to Kiel in a Bond movie.
You can already picture the climactic fight scene, with Bond struggling to defuse a nuclear device implanted in Valuev’s skull, the off button located just inside his left ear. Daniel Craig in a giant pair of union flag boxer shorts — and padded gloves.
But it would be wrong to typecast Valuev as a mere movie monster. His appearance might suggest that the only thing that’s been going through his mind lately is Haye’s fist, but by reputation he’s a gentle giant and a sensitive soul. He was never really cut out to be a boxer. He writes poetry, reads Tolstoy and listens to Chopin. That’s not quite on a par with Lundgren (a Fulbright scholar with a master’s in chemical engineering) but it indicates Valuev could easily memorize a line more challenging than “Raaaargh!” or “Time to die, Meester Bond!”
But what’s this? Valuev already has a movie career. He can be seen in a German fairy tale spoof called 7 Zwerge — Der Wald Ist Nicht Genug, or “Seven dwarves — the forest is not enough.” The Bond producers better get a move on and snap him up before someone else does.
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