He May Find Reality Hard to Stomach

David Tua, who will fight champion Lennox Lewis tonight in Las Vegas for the WBC and IBF heavyweight titles, has told the British tabloid, the Sun, “My ancestors were cannibals. I can already taste Lennox.”

Tua is a Samoan who lives in New Zealand.

Said Ron Borges of the Boston Globe, “His ancestors, so the story goes, were Polynesian fighters who dined upon a visiting missionary or two in their heyday before finally succumbing to their preachings and becoming deeply religious.”

Lewis, however, is seven inches taller than Tua and has such a reach advantage, says Borges, that for Tua “to do any dining at ringside, he’ll have to be ordering from room service.”

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More Tua: His spiked hairdo became an issue recently, when handlers for Lewis complained to Nevada boxing officials about the unruly locks that stick out five inches or so from the top of the challenger’s head.

Lewis himself doesn’t seem concerned about Tua’s hairdo--or his vaunted power.

“You can’t just bring power and a hairdo,” he said. “You have to bring everything. I bring an arsenal.”

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Trivia time: What was unusual about USC’s football games with Washington State in 1936 and 1937?

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Same old blarney: Lou Holtz is at it again. The South Carolina coach is building up today’s opponent, Florida, as if the Gators were an NFL team. Florida Coach Steve Spurrier isn’t buying the syrup.

“Coach Holtz can save a lot of conversation about how great we are because we’re not going to listen,” Spurrier said. “I’m sure listening to him, you’d think our offense is like the St. Louis Rams and our defense is like the Iron Curtain of Pittsburgh in the ‘70s.”

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Chase over: After Jacksonville, Fla., was awarded the 2005 Super Bowl during the recent NFL owners’ meetings in Atlanta, co-chairman Pete Rummell of the city’s host committee said, “I feel a little like the dog who just caught the car.”

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Patience: Sandy Baldwin, a leading candidate to become chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee: “The USOC isn’t like a thoroughbred racehorse, it’s like a camel. And our job is to groom it and make sure it doesn’t sprout a third hump.

“If you can keep it meandering forward slowly, you’ve done a great job.”

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Agitator: Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News, writing on Larry Bowa, the new manager of the Phillies:

“As a player, Bowa was a Hall of Fame needler and bench jockey.

“He would target guys who responded to his barbs, and once they showed a trace of red butt, he would never let them up. Steve Carlton would routinely threaten to kill Bowa if he didn’t shut up, a threat that usually worked.

“Victims got back by calling him ‘Pee Wee,’ a nickname Bowa detested.”

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You told him: Tim Kawakami in the San Jose Mercury News, on Chris Berman:

“I like the guy on TV. He’s charming and probably irreplaceable for the ESPN audience. But would somebody please tell him that his weekly ‘NFL Two-Minute Drill’ pieces on ‘SportsCenter’ have become a self-obsessed mess?”

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Looking back: On this day in 1933, Stanford ended USC’s 27-game unbeaten streak with a 13-7 victory at the Coliseum.

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Trivia answer: They were scoreless ties.

And finally: Golf Digest Woman has given the annual Best Use of Golf Apparel award to Tillie Tooter, 83, who, the magazine says, used her socks as water vessels when she was stranded in a Florida swamp after a car wreck.