Payback time in the ring for Kevin Barry

By MICHELE HEWITSON

The Tuaman is standing behind the right shoulder of manager Kevin Barry.

He's not saying anything but his gaze is level. You can't help but know that he's there; that he's a not-quite-lifesize cardboard cutout is of little consequence - where Barry is, David Tua is too.

It's been that way for eight years. Which is when the 19-year-old kid with a bronze Olympic medal in hand was taken up by then 32-year-old Barry, who had, somewhere at home, a silver Olympic medal stuffed in a drawer.

Tua is now 27, Barry 40, and on November 12 - just in case you did not already know - they will take on Lennox Lewis for the heavyweight boxing championship of the world.

And it will be "they." Tua, of course, will be in the ring, but Barry will be there, inside Tua's head, an all-but-physical presence inside the ropes.

They have already been there, in hours and hours of conversation and in Barry's dreams. He has seen the fight happen.

For now, as the last months tick away in a tightly scripted training programme, the two are holed up in their Auckland camp. They will be there for the next two weeks and then leave for a promotional tour of the United States, before settling into the happily named Prince Ranch in the desert near Las Vegas to concentrate on pre-bout training.

As camps go, this one, on the 19th floor of an inner-city apartment tower, is pretty fine. It has spectacular sea views and sun-drenched balconies.

And it is nearly impregnable: phone from the footpath and you will be escorted in the lift to the Tua/Barry bachelor pad by a man with a swipe-card and little in the way of conversation.

Tua and Barry are finishing lunch. Tua is teasing Barry, who does not really want to do an interview: "You're a big star."

Barry has been a big star before. At least he might have expected to have been one.

In 1984, he came home from the Los Angeles Olympics with that silver, New Zealand's first boxing medal in 56 years.

But his Olympics ended amid a near riot and in one of the great controversies in Olympic boxing history. On that August day Barry was in the ring for a semifinal with the favourite, Evander Holyfield.

Barry was never going to win the fight. He was, though, and proudly, going to bring home the bronze.

But then came what boxing commentators of the time described as an H-bomb of a left hook. Holyfield landed it an instant after the ref had called for the fight to stop. Barry, confused, legs staggering under him, was awarded the bout - and the silver.

The crowd erupted in a frenzy of booing and threw whatever was nearest: bottles, coins, beer glasses. Barry's father, his trainer, was hit by a flying stool and was bleeding from a gash in his forehead as the New Zealanders left the arena by a back door.

Barry says now that he did not handle the controversy well.

"I found it hard to accept the silver medal. I believe I didn't deserve it - I was losing the fight.

"I was a proud guy, and I'm still a proud guy today and I never want anything that I don't deserve."

When the silver medallist arrived home, people would say: "I saw your fight, I saw your fight." Barry said: "What about the three before that?"

Sixteen years on, the memory still jars - and that medal is still tainted.

"I had the silver medal put around my neck on the podium, and all the Americans booed. I took it off and I never put it on again."

That blunt statement gives an indication of the calibre of Barry's resolve. As does his response to the people who are "coming up and grabbing me and hugging me. Yeah, the sheer thrill and excitement for them. They're just so rapt that they think that's how I'm feeling. They say: 'Oh, how do you hold yourself together?'

"Well," says Barry emphatically, "the bottom line is that we have achieved something that we've always known: that David would fight for the heavyweight championship of the world."

After all, this time it is personal. "Another opportunity for me to live my experience, and to correct it."

Because Barry did expect that there might have been gold in that silver. "I had expected probably a lot more than actually happened. I would have thought that with the publicity and everything else ... "

He auditioned for commercials which fell through, was offered jobs that did not appeal.

"I didn't make any money out of boxing at all. Someone should have said, 'We've got this guy who shows good character and values'."

Nobody did. So Barry went spec building, did some boxing commentaries and a bit of training. His boxing career, which began the first time he climbed into a ring at age 8, was over by the time he was 24.

Then along came a young Samoan boy from South Auckland. Barry had watched him from a distance, offered him bits of praise, got to know him and decided he liked him a lot.

And that was all there was to it. Until Tua brought home the bronze from Barcelona in 1992 - the colour of the medal Barry had hoped for from his Olympics.

Until Barry heard of plans to keep Tua amateur for the next two years; that he was to be groomed to win a gold for New Zealand at the next Commonwealth Games. "And I said: 'Over my dead body.'

"I saw the opportunity that had been presented to this young man; a similar opportunity that had been presented to me in 1984 ... I had nobody who could seize that moment for me."

Seizing the moment that has stretched to eight relentless years has meant that these two men from different cultures are united in pursuit of "one of the greatest goals in the sporting world," and have forged a relationship as unassailable as that apartment building.

Both had a boxing background, Tua's in balmy Samoa, then later in South Auckland, where he went to Otahuhu College.

Barry grew up in the very English city of Christchurch, where he attended Catholic St Bede's College.

Tua's father, Tuavale, trained by punching sugarbags filled with sand; Barry's dad, Kevin Barry sen, was awarded an MBE in 1994 for services to boxing.

Barry and Tua are together 24 hours a day. They take holidays together - a recent one involved a boys' bonding session on Great Barrier Island where they fished and hunted together.

Barry looks at me as though I'm mad when I suggest it is, from the outside looking in, an odd sort of friendship. He opens his arms expansively: "Dave's a part of my family."

Behind the scenes, away from the camp, there is a third person in this relationship: Barry's wife, former Olympic gymnast Tanya Moss. Without her, says Barry, he would never have set out on the path of chasing the dream.

They have twin boys aged 5 1/2 (Tua is their godfather) and a 7-year-old daughter. Barry goes home on Saturday afternoons to catch up.

"I know if there wasn't a relationship that wasn't as strong, God, I would have been divorced a long time ago."

Over the years Tua has lived, off and on, with the Barry household. Yes, they get sick of each other, says Barry. "I know when he needs a break, when he needs to be left alone and I give him the space."

And when they take on Lewis, what then? What do you do when you've chased the dream to its ending?

It won't be over by any means, because the second generation arrives to finish the work of the first.

Because when - you don't say "if" inside the Tuaman camp - Tua becomes heavyweight champion of the world on November 12 he will go on to fight Holyfield in a unification fight. "That," says a grinning Barry "is the full circle."