Obituary: Kitione Lave

Boxer. Died aged 72.

In 1953, when he was about 19, Lavemai Kitione Takitau decided to leave his native Tonga and come to New Zealand as "heavyweight champion of the South Seas".

He had only obtained a pair of boxing gloves the year before. Since then he had won five bouts against other Pacific Islanders, all knockouts.

He was a powerful, well-proportioned young man, said to be 1.8m tall and to weigh 89kg. He was very fast and athletic, although certainly not then a boxer trained in all the skills. More a case, it seems, of hitting people very hard and frequently until they fell over and forgot to get up.

By the time he had won five fights in a row people who remember those days say he was filling the Auckland Town Hall. And he had become Kitione Lave the Tongan Torpedo.

This title now sounds unusual. But Lave, born in 1934, had grown up in the Pacific during World War II when the area was criss-crossed by torpedoes. The idea behind the label was apparently that if, like a torpedo, you didn't see Lave's fist coming, the consequences could be very grave.

By September 1953, when he was facing his sixth New Zealand fight, his monarch Queen Salote of Tonga decided it was time for a word. At the time she was on her way back to Tonga from the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Lave was summoned, the Herald recorded, to her Auckland home to receive "a piece of sound, motherly advice".

Lave was reminded that as a member of the proud Tongan race it was by his conduct that other Tongans would be judged.

"Never by word or deed must you bring discredit on your people," she said.

He said she told him "not to get a swelled head and not to show off".

The Queen did not want him, he added, to be "just a big balloon that blows up and bursts".

The young boxer, a serious-minded, non-drinking, non-smoking devout churchgoer, gave his word.

And for a couple of weeks before his sixth fight he helped around his monarch's Epsom home as a self-appointed odd-job man, mowing lawns, chopping wood and helping with packing and washing up.

The Torpedo's sixth opponent was Don Mullet, the New Zealand heavyweight champion. Lave won his sixth straight fight. It was stopped in the seventh of 12 rounds and he was declared to have won on points. News reports said an accidental clash of heads in that round caused Mullett to wheel away. A doctor pronounced him unfit to continue.

It was claimed as the first time in a New Zealand professional bout that the referee invoked a rule which declared a boxer ahead on points when an accident happened to be the winner. Lave had already floored Mullett twice.

In those young years Lave apparently harboured thoughts of eventually fighting the then (and still) hero of heavyweight boxing - unbeaten world champion American Rocky Marciano.

It was not to be. As Lave climbed the boxing ladder, and had many wins, he also lost some to boxers much more skilled in countering the young man's ferocious attacks.

Lave also fought in England (known as the Tongan Terror), Australia and elsewhere.

He did beat the former British heavyweight champion Don Cockell with a second-round knockout in London in 1956. Cockell had once gone nine rounds with Marciano. It was as close to his hero as Lave got.

He finished his professional boxing career in 1962 winning 78 of 87 fights, most by knockout. He also joined the Royal Air Force as a fitness/boxing instructor for a time.

After being involved in English boxing, wrestling and casino interests he returned to New Zealand in 1971 at 36 with his English wife Patricia (Gee) and their daughter of the same name. He married Patricia, an English schoolteacher, in 1957.

They both survive him. He died after a long illness on June 2.