I am nose to nose with the biggest-ever world heavyweight boxing champion and he's not happy.

At 7ft 2in and 24st, Nicolai Valuev is two feet taller than me and three times my weight.

The immense Russian fixes me with the terrifying stare usually saved for those unlucky enough to meet him in the ring. I almost fall off the table I am standing on.

"Tell her not to look me in the eye like that," he growls through his interpreter. "The only people who come that close to me are my wife and my coach. Anyone else, I want to hit."

I don't need telling twice - I've just watched him in the gym, where every huge punch is a bomb blast. But then the man they call the Beast of the East returns to gently help me from my table.

At 32, Valuev became Russia's first ever world heavyweight champion in December, wrenching the WBA crown from American John Ruiz. A mass of contradictions, he crushes other men's cheekbones for a living but writes poetry, reads Tolstoy and dotes on his tiny wife Galina and their three-year-old son Grisha.

We meet in the St Petersburg sports hall, where he trains. As he pulls up a seat, everything else in the room shrinks. His plastic cup becomes a thimble...

"The people who say I am the Beast from the East don't know me," he says firmly. "I am not a beast and I do not like this name." So I ask about little Grisha.

"He's already decided he wants to be a boxer and he is training," says Valuev, without a hint of irony. "They are a little worried at his nursery school."

He goes on: "I'll support him whatever he wants to do, as long as he is happy. When I think what life was like when I was growing up, I'm happy he has more opportunities."

I ask him how he reacts when people put his success down to his size rather than his skills. With the weary expression, he says: "People will support the smaller man, but I know my boxing is getting better and I have the title to show for it. But I have other dreams." "Such as?" I ask.

"I don't want to talk about them," he says. "But anything else I do in my life will be for the sake of the people close to me."

Nicolai Valuev. Good friend, dreadful enemy.

WHAT VALUEV'S OPPONENTS SAID

JOHN RUIZ: "The hardest part of the night will be helping to get him up. He has a head the size of a Volkswagen. I won't be able to miss." Ruiz endured 12 rounds with Valuev, but lost on points.

GERALD NOBLES: "I didn't want to stay in there with that man, that's the truth." Nobles admitted deliberately aiming at Valuev's knees to get himself disqualified.

LARRY DONALD: "He was able to make it look, just by his sheer size, that he was hitting me even when he wasn't. I've never seen a man like him, ever. He's like Neanderthal man." Donald lost to Valuev on another controversial points decision.

CLIFFORD ETIENNE: "Nobody told me I was taking on Bigfoot. I would rather walk home to America than get in the ring with him. The guy is not human." After the weigh-in, Etienne packed his bags and told his manager he was off. Having been persuaded to stay and fight, he was taken out in just three rounds.