on 1997, Oleg Maskaev, who had a record 10-1 with a first round TKO loss to Oliver McCall, faced down 26-0 David tua and largely outboxed him for 11 rounds before getting caught. If Oleg fought David when he was more experienced, it seems likely he would’ve went the distance and got the nod.
Oleg from what I've seen is a good boxer with ok power but he did have a bad chin so Tua has a very legit path to victory but Oleg could just outbox him as Tua was never champ for a reason. Very short too.
Maskaev should be favored from like 2003 to 2006. Tua would be favored before that bec he actually beat him, even though the struggle was real.
We saw that Oleg could outbox Tua. But as we know Maskaev was vulnerable to getting tagged, and Tua was a huge puncher. A Maskaev decision is a possibility; we saw that in real life when it nearly happened. I don’t think there’s any point in Oleg’s career though where you could confidently pick him to stay upright over 12 against Tua. I’m not sure he was much better during his second run than he was prior to losing to Johnson. There’s a range of possibilities from a 1st round Tua blowout through to a Maskaev decision win. The most common scenario is probably the later rounds stoppage that happened when they did fight.
Just noticed that Makaev record was announced as 20-1 (16). Not that it means anything i just found it interesting.
So this fight was on CBS Sports on a Saturday afternoon. I remember it well because I was broke and unemployed, living with a girlfriend who was paying the bills. PPV fights were strictly out of reach. We were out for lunch and I made sure we hustled home so I could catch this one for free. Being on a major network which relied on ad revenue, the highest priced was between rounds, I always felt there was a certain incentive for these fights to go long, if not the distance. And when I watched this one, and rewatch it to this day, I really feel that Tua was incentivized to carry Oleg. And then when he turns on the heat in the 11th he damn near decapitated the Ruskie. I always felt he could do that much earlier. If you watch the early and mid rounds David just seems to be in sparring mode.
