To watch Nikolai Valuev prepare to strip down and weigh in for the final time was to watch a man attempt and fail to find a hiding place inside his own body. Surrounded but alone, the giant Russian had been dragged to a Nuremberg shopping centre on a Friday afternoon for the sole purpose of attracting eyeballs and was now, as he waited, doing his best to avoid them. When not bowing his head, the heavyweight could be seen cowering in an alcove, attracting, despite the futile effort to make himself small, the attention of all the people his promoter knew would be there. Some presumably recognised Valuev as the boxer, that tall one, whereas others were drawn to him simply because he was so much larger than everyone else in the shopping centre that day.
He could try, you see, but being seven-feet tall there was no escape for Nikolai Valuev. There were no hiding places in the shopping centre, nor could he find one in his own body, no matter how hard he looked. In fact, his body, more so than the man he was set to fight, represented Valuev’s biggest and toughest opponent, something true for some time. If he wasn’t being punished physically by acromegaly, he was, by virtue of his sheer size, prevented from ever experiencing either privacy or normality when out in public.
That said, Valuev’s size did provide him with many things, too. For one, it gave him his career as a professional boxer. It also gave him his nickname: “The Beast from the East.” It even gave him the kind of attention most fighters, especially nowadays, would either kill their grandparents or fail a drug test to sample just once.
Yet what in the end made Nikolai Valuev so different and so interesting was the fact that his size and the attention it brought led only to a desire to shrink in public, as was evident in Nuremberg. Just as he had no say in his size, he had no say in how people greeted him, or looked at him, and this left us all free to gawp in a way different than we would when in the presence of any other heavyweight. The alternative, of course, was to run, which would have been the move of many upon hearing that a supposedly violent man of seven feet roamed unsupervised in a local shopping centre. However, one fleeting glance at Valuev in Nuremberg and you soon realised there was no reason to worry, much less flee. More scared of you than you were of him, he avoided eye contact with even the people tall and brave enough to initiate it, and he remained in his alcove, or cave, until finally beckoned to follow David Haye, his next opponent, onto the scales.
At that point, as per tradition, The Beast was watched by one and all, served up on a stage as photographers snapped away, click click click. The public, meanwhile, waited for the number, knowing it would, like him, be abnormally and almost comically big. They then got it: 316 pounds (22 stone 8).
Earlier Haye, the challenger, had weighed 217 pounds, meaning there was just shy of a 100-pound difference between the pair, enough to excite even those shoppers with no interest in boxing. Once they then learned the challenger’s first name was David, their interest only increased, for now a boxing match had a language they all understood: David vs. Goliath.
Most Valuev fights were sold on the same premise, of course, but this one, in 2009, really nailed its marketing. More than just the name, Haye brought to the occasion the energy Valuev lacked, the ego Valuev lacked, and the desperation to be seen Valuev clearly lacked. It made him, in other words, the perfect foil for The Beast from The East from a commercial standpoint, yet, equally, a nightmare to both fight and be around. Even before struggling to pin him down in the ring, Valuev had to listen to Haye taunt him, call him names, and try to entice him from his cave. It was, to Haye, all a bit of fun, harmless, key to the promotion, only with cheap shops in place of slingshots never was it really David and Goliath.
The next day, just hours from the fight, Haye imagined slaying Valuev while in his hotel room, stabbing left jabs from a crouched position whenever up on his feet. He would, when seated, watch fights involving tall fighters against smaller fighters – including Floyd Mayweather vs. Diego Corrales and Shane Mosley vs. Antonio Margarito – and obsess over the details of the tale of the tape: the difference in height, the difference in reach. He would then amuse himself by comparing the magnitude of his own task with those of Mayweather and Mosley, comforted only by the belief that Valuev possessed neither the speed nor skill of the likes of Corrales and Margarito.
Valuev, in fact, was considered by many to be lucky to still be WBA heavyweight champion at the time. Some said only his size had got him opportunities in the first place, while others, the kind more generous, said that Valuev, although a credible fighter, should have lost his belt in a 2008 defence against Evander Holyfield. That fight took place in Switzerland and appeared to be a fight Holyfield won, even at the age of 46. It was certainly all the incentive Haye and his team required to switch their focus from Vitali Klitschko, against whom he was set to fight, and pursue Valuev instead. In Valuev, you see, the danger was the challenge – the size challenge – more so than the beast itself. He had already been soundly beaten by Ruslan Chagaev and since that night in 2007 had gone the 12-round distance five times, a testament to his stamina, yes, but also a sign Valuev was “beastly” in appearance only.
Haye, someone whose durability was often questioned, knew exactly what he had to do and just about did it. He used his speed to get in and out and did enough to win most of the 12 rounds they were always destined to share. There were, for him at least, plenty of hiding places in a ring purposely large and there were also many spots on Valuev’s body to hit whenever brave enough to stop moving and engage. All this combined had Valuev, the champion, again experiencing that feeling with which he was now familiar: one of being surrounded but alone.
Three days after the fight, on November 10, Valuev spoke of retiring from boxing, citing persistent injuries as the primary reason. This was due as much to his size as his sport and Valuev underwent two operations for bone and joint problems in 2010 which required a minimum of six months recovery. There was also the suggestion of a benign brain tumour which in itself would be reason to quit. Either way, he retired from boxing with a record of 50-2 (34) and remains both the tallest and heaviest world champion in history.
In his retirement, Valuev, who is now 51, would go on to become a member of the State Duma through the United Russia Party in 2011 and the following year supported the law in Russian Parliament banning the adoption of Russian orphans by citizens of the United States. It was then in 2016 that The Beast was announced as the new host of Good Night, Little Ones!, Russia’s long-running TV show for kids.
Samuel Johnson, the renowned English writer, once said, “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man,” and of this we see evidence all the time in boxing; a sport in which damaged and flawed human beings are encouraged to become beasts in order to both thrive and fit in. But I have often wondered whether the reverse of this is possible and whether beasts can become men as easily as men can become beasts.
In boxing, a sport home to more beasts than honest men, I struggle to imagine how it would be.
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