Sat, Oct 24, 2009 page19

• FEATURE : Nikolai Valuev: a beast with the heart of a poet

  • AFP
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  Nikolay Valuev is used to the looks and sniggers that his huge size has attracted over the years, but the comments from his latest challenger have been particularly caustic. David Haye, Britain’s former undisputed world cruiserweight champion, has declared he is only just getting warmed up after calling Valuev “a circus freak” ahead of their fight in Nuremberg on Nov. 7 for Valuev’s WBA heavyweight title.

  At 2.18m tall and 146kg, Valuev is the biggest world heavyweight champion in history and will tower over his opponent when he gets into the ring to face Haye, who is 1.88m and does not expect to be over 100kg for the fight.

  Haye’s trash talk might be particularly dirty, but it does not seem to be unsettling the Russian champion. Valuev has heard all the insults before after being compared to Shrek and billed earlier in his career as “The Beast from the East.”

  

  Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev signs autographs in Panama City on Sept. 4.

  PHOTO: EPA

  “I am not a circus show,” said Valuev. “I am a normal human being. People sometimes do not treat me like a human being because of my size and make me a sensation. I try to not take it personally because they do not know me as a person. My name is Nikolay Valuev, not something else.”

  “I don’t really care about what he says or does,” Valuev said about Haye, who once famously taunted the Klitschko brothers — both heavyweight champions — by wearing a T-shirt showing an image of him holding their severed heads.

  “I cannot take him seriously. When I first heard about the T-shirts where he chopped the Klitschkos, I thought, ‘Oh my God, another idiot in our world,’” Valuev said. “He can say whatever he likes — it will not get him my title.”

  “I will be in perfect shape on Nov. 7. Let’s see what Haye has to say after our meeting in the ring — I doubt it will be much,” Valuev said.

  But Valuev’s Germany-based promoter Kalle Sauerland believes Haye’s comments have riled the champion.

  “Niko has laughed at what Haye has been saying but he didn’t like the image of Haye punching his head off a cardboard cut out of himself,” Sauerland told reporters. “He promised me that he’s going to knock Haye out, which he doesn’t normally say about opponents. I think Haye has got to him a little bit. I don’t think he appreciates being called some of the things Haye has said.”

  “He has lost just once in 51 fights and fought everyone out there available, so if he is a circus act like Haye says he is, I want to go the circus,” Sauerland said.

  Haye admits he thinks Valuev is “cold” and fittingly the Russian’s favorite pastime is hunting. However, there is a gentler side to the giant, who is said to enjoy reading classics by Leo Tolstoy, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

  And rather incongruously for a heavyweight boxer, Valuev even wrote his own poems to woo his 1.57m wife 10 years ago.

  “The poems were written for Galina,” said Valuev. “They are personal and I don’t like to discuss them. I’m a boxer, not a poet.”

  Valuev even admits he is surprised himself that he has ended up as a top boxer, considering his nature.

  “Boxing is something I don’t really do with a passion,” he has said.

  Indeed, Valuev very nearly did not take up boxing at all and it was not until he was 20 that he became addicted to the sport.

  He was born to parents who both stood only 1.65m tall and raised in St Petersburg. His father, Sergei, worked in a factory repairing radios while young Nikolay first excelled at basketball at a sports school where he grew accustomed to the attention his size was earning him. After a short amateur boxing career, Valuev turned professional aged 21 in 1993. He made his professional debut in Berlin and boxed in the early years of his career in England, Australia, Japan and America.

  Valuev, who steps over the ropes rather than between them to get to the ring, kept winning until he took his chance to win the WBA world title with a majority points decision over American John Ruiz in December 2005. After three defences, Valuev suffered the only blemish on his 16-year 51-fight professional record. Valuev blamed the wrong strategy for defeat to Uzbek Ruslan Chagaev on points in 2007 and has since been trained by Alexander Zimin.
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