Boxing Profile: Nicolay Valuev

Phenom Or Modern Day Primo?

In 1928, a young man from Sequals, Italy by the name of Primo Carnera entered the heavyweight scene He was a mountain of a man for his day, standing at over 6’5″ tall and weighing over 210 lb, he fast made a name for himself. Dubbed “The Ambling Alp”, Carnera was brought along slowly with hand picked opponents and hyped up to be a superman type fighter with incredible strength.

He was not the biggest guy in boxing around at the time as here and there, a few men stood taller but were horrible fighters and never had the recognition, so Carnera, as far as the world was concerned, was the giant of pugilism. In truth, Carnera himself was no fisticuffs specialist and “The Ambling Alp” could have been easily been dubbed “The Bumbling Alp”, but in 1928, when there was no world wide TV or ESPN to actually show him fight, people went on the word of the exaggerated press to gain their knowledge and according to that, Primo was invincible. When he won the title from Jack Sharkey in 1933, his reputation soared.

It didn’t take to long after that for the world to find out that Carnera was not all he was made out to be. His previous losses before he won the title had been either disregarded or easily forgotten and once the belt was around his waist, only one loss was all it took to expose the Italian Giant for what he was.

After two defenses of the belt, one of which was against former Light Heavyweight Champion Tommy Loughran, Primo lost his title to Max Baer and sunk into relative perennial contender status.

He fought sporadically and ended up losing seven of his last ten bouts, one by KO to a guy making his pro debut and another to a fellow who had a 0-1-1 record. All told, Carnera had a record of 88-15 (71), with his greatest wins coming against an overage champion and a former light heavyweight.

Primo will always be remembered as a guy with the goofy smile and a bit of luck. He was neither skilled nor fast. He could give a heck of a punch but never really took one well. His size really wasn’t all that large, especially compared to the big men of today who average 6’5″ and weight around the 240 pound mark, but nonetheless, he became Champion in the most important division in the world and made his place in history no matter how tainted his in ring abilities.

Move forward to 1993 to St. Petersburg, Russia. A young man standing 7 feet tall and in excess of 300 lb has his first pro fight. The people present, including his opponent, stand in awe of this massive man. Unlike Carnera, who was really just a big guy for an era when the average tall fellow stood 6’1″, this truly was a giant.

Valuev has gone through 44 opponents thus far without a loss, disposing of 32 of them before the final bell. Nicknamed “The Beast from the East”, Valuev has thus far been somewhat of an enigma to his opposition. Yet, like his smaller counterpart from some 75 years ago, the flaws are quickly becoming evident. So are the similarities.

Most of Carnera’s early fights took place close to home, as were Valuev’s. Most of the opposition were guys with losing records or who had less than 10 fights under their belts when they faced the giants. The number one similarity between Carnera and Valuev is the champion from which they won their titles. Carnera won his from Jack Sharkey, who was overrated and aging while Valuev won his from John Ruiz, who is known for losing the title almost every other bout or winning a defense with controversy.

So far Valuev’s best competition has been Gerald Nobles, Attila Levin, Clifford Etienne, Larry Donald and Owen Beck. Three have either lost to each other or a common opponent and Nobles has spent more time in jail than the ring in recent history.

It’s also becoming more evident with every fight that Valuev and Carnera have similar abilities in the ring. Valuev is very slow and his style is extremely basic with very little variation. A fighter who can manage to get in and out, without Valuev leaning on them to stop momentum, will be very successful.

The problem for Ruiz was that he is an inside “hit and hold” fighter and Nicolay’s size made it impossible to do this effectively. Nobles became frustrated with Valuev’s unwillingness to fight and managed to get himself DQ’ d. Valuev became cautious in that bout as Nobles is a very hard hitter and Valuev seemed to not like getting banged up.

This could be a hint that the Russian giant is a bit tender. It is obvious that just because he is big, Valuev is not the most solid body out there. He is somewhat loose in the skin and lacks the hard body of many of today’s more dominate heavyweights.

The idea of an outside attack so far has seemed pointless by his opponents because of Nicolay’s long reach and the old rule of staying away from the end of a guy’s punches where his power lies. What happens when that theory is thrown out the window? When a guy, as I mentioned before, goes in and out, avoids the clinch and uses the Russians’ lack of speed against him?

Someone who isn’t afraid to take a hard shot? Or worse yet for Valuev, what if he finds a guy who can take his shots and not be to effected? He failed to KO Ruiz, who doesn’t have the best of chins. He refused to go toe to toe with Nobles, who prefers to bang. What would happen against a guy like, lets say, Sam Peter, who can take a shot and just comes forward, hitting hard?

There have been rumors on why Valuev was kept in Russia for so long. Timing was the key culprit. Some believe his handlers wanted to make sure Vitali Klitschko was gone for good. Rumors speculated that Klitschko, who could bang hard and take tremendous punishment as shown in the Lewis fight, would ruin the Russian before he had a chance to claim a title. Or, if he did claim one, Vitali would end the reign quickly, during a quest to unite the belts.

Leaving Valuev without his main weapon of intimidation, Vitali would have been the second biggest guy out there, standing almost 6’8″ and his power was more than evident along with tremendous skill. If a blue print was laid out on how to beat Valuev with his lack of ability, every fighter in the top 10 may have used it to send the big man packing.

These ideas, are of course, just speculation but not far fetched. Look at Primo Carnera, it happened to him in the Baer fight and he became the joke of his era. Often he is known as the worst heavyweight champion in history other than Ingemar Johanssen. In Carnera’s day, there was only one title, so he had no way to target the weakest champion of the 4, so there was nothing left to chase after that. Valuev was lucky enough to have the option of targeting the weakest of the pack

Of course all this is just observance and opinion. The similarities are just coincidental. There may not really be any at all. Valuev may be the “Beast from the East” that the sport (make that Don King) has dubbed him. For all we know .Nicolay has skills that we don’t know about and has yet had reason to use them.

He may have a granite chin and the fact he wouldn’t brawl with Gerald Nobles is due more to the fact he wouldn’t fight the other guys fight than he wasn’t taking chances of getting caught with a lucky shot. Right now the book is still out on him. In time, we will have us our answer. Who knows, Monte Barrett may give us that answer next month?

For some reason, with the way that Don King has been shoving the King Kong angle at us, I think the answer may already be there. King always seems to have the answers somewhere and always makes sure he gets the most out of what he has before it’s sucked up and blown away. Look at his past, he has done it more than once. Which brings me to another coincidence; Don started his King Kong invasion in a New York city press conference. The same place the humongous fictional ape met his maker and fell to the ground. I wonder if he is trying to tell us something?