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Sports correspondent & historian with |
One of my mates asked me a question at last year’s Boxing New Zealand National Championships held in Tauranga, which I have quietly considered for the last year and a half.
The question was who I considered the best New Zealand amateur boxer since the New Zealand Boxing Association was established in 1902.
A question about the subjective nature of boxing decisions would produce various answers based on individual boxing fans’ perspectives.
My first port of call was to consider the four Olympic medalists. Ted Morgan was Olympic welterweight champion at the 1928 Amsterdam Games nearly a century ago.
Kevin Barry Jnr was awarded the Silver medal at the LA Olympics forty years ago, with David Tua (1992) and David Nyika (2021) as bronze medalists.
New Zealand has won three medals at the World Amateur championships, which sits second behind the Olympic competition. David Tua (1991) and Melanie Horne (2001) brought home Bronze medallions, while Thea Awhitu lost in the junior featherweight title decider, at the 2011 Women’s Youth & Junior World Championships in Antalya, Turkey.
Others to throw in the mix were the Commonwealth Games champions Frank Creagh (1950), Wally Coe (1962), Bill Kini (1966), Jimmy Peau (1986), Michael Kenny (1990), and David Nyika (2014, 2018).
After many reminiscences and much deliberation, I reluctantly left out Ted Morgan, as it is almost impossible to compare boxers so far back in the mists of time.
With Olympic medals trumping all other amateur contests, Kevin Barry, David Tua, and David Nyika remained in contention in my mind.
Calling on my background as an amateur boxing historian, I laid out the three contenders’ credentials as my Best Kiwi Amateur Boxer of all Time.
Kevin Barry Jr. added a Commonwealth Championships Gold Medal to his Olympic Silver Medallion. Barry finished his international career with 20 wins from 24 contests.
David Tua brought Olympic (1992) and World Championship (1991) Bronze medals to the equation.
Another measure of Tua’s amateur ability is provided after he was controversially beaten by a Cuban in the first round of the 1990 Junior World Championships in Peru.
National Coach Dr John McKay believed that David was good enough to defeat the Heavyweight winner, so he brought Russian Igor Androv to New Zealand later that year. After losing the first fight in Auckland by a whisker, he won the second in Palmerston North to vindicate his coach’s faith.
David Nyika entered the contest with two Commonwealth Games titles and an Olympic Bronze Medal.
Nyika was funded to fight around the globe, winning as the fighter of the tournament at the Felix Stamm International tournament in Poland in 2019.
I went for David Tua in my razor-thin final decision from David Nyika.
Tua had won the New Zealand Heavyweight amateur crown three times before he turned nineteen, with Nyika winning the same crown twice in the ring of combat.
Tua then added his Olympic and World Championship medals before his twentieth birthday, before his glittering and well-documented time as a professional prizefighter.
