For so long the comparisons were kind, flattering, focused only on the positives. They centred largely on the way he stood – upright, steady, poised – and the way he threw his right hand nice and straight, just like his old man.
They also touched on the difference in size, with the son slightly bigger than the father, and what it would take for the son to eventually eclipse what his father had achieved in the ring. The early signs were positive, they said, but still he had a long, long way to go. His father, after all, was not just any world champion, but one of the finest fighters of his generation. He made 13 title defenses. He made Zab Judah dance. He made a nation proud and a son feel inspired enough to want to follow in his footsteps.
That is why Tim Tszyu has for years been compared to his father: how he fights, how he wins, how far he has to go to emulate him. He has been compared to him because his father, Kostya, was no ordinary fighter and, in the context of a son carrying on the family business, no ordinary father, either.
Until now, the stories Tim will have heard will have been mostly positive, much like the comparisons. The same goes for the evidence, too. He will, for instance, have presumably watched Judah stumble around the ring in round two more than once, as well as admired footage of his dad putting various other opponents to the sword with that thunderous right hand. Better yet, he has always had the luxury of discussing these moments and those wins with the architect himself; allowing his father to reminisce or, if not that way inclined, have others do the describing on his behalf.
Rarely, if ever, during these conversations will they have dawdled on the tough times, the struggles, or the defeats. That does not mean that Tim is unaware of them, of course, or even that Kostya would be unwilling to revisit them. All it means is that setback is not the first thing that springs to mind when you recall the career of Kostya Tszyu. In fact, his career, which ended with him boasting a 31-2 (25) pro record, was spoiled only by two defeats, one of which came in his very last fight. Otherwise, Tszyu was a picture of dominance, near faultless.
Indeed, it is for that reason Tim, his son, has perhaps felt the weight of expectation since turning pro in 2016. He has handled this pressure well by and large, winning 24 fights in a row, yet this year, sadly, there have been signs that either the pressure, or his own impatience, has at last started to get the better of him.
Whichever it is, Tim Tszyu has lost not once but twice in 2024 and on Saturday, in the most recent of these defeats, he was floored four times by Bakhram Murtazaliev before being stopped in round three. Shocking, yes, and also conclusive, Tszyu was at no stage competitive with Murtazaliev and took all manner of heavy shots before finally succumbing. He started out reckless and ended up regretful. It was, in every sense, a reality check and turning point.
Worst of all, this was supposed to be his comeback fight; that is, the win that follows a fighter’s first defeat. It was never going to be easy, nobody said that, but coming as it did after his defeat against Sebastian Fundora in March, the hope was that Tszyu would get back on track and restore any confidence he may have lost. Instead, by electing to fight Murtazaliev, the experience served to do more harm than good. It certainly did more harm to Tszyu than the loss to Fundora; which, in the final analysis, owed as much to the cut Tszyu picked up in round two (from Fundora’s elbow) as any deficiency or limitation on his part. He was in fact praised for his performance that night, despite ultimately losing a split decision. It was, they said, the sort of gut-check not all young fighters pass. He lost nothing in terms of reputation. He was, they said, still very much his father’s son.
Then he lost again to go 0-2 in 2024 and now suddenly people are wondering what the future holds for Tszyu, 24-2 (17). Some say he needs to settle down, go back to square one, or go back to Australia. Others have even said he needs to retire and that his recklessness, partly responsible for his woes this year, will lead only to further trouble down the line.
Tszyu, 29, remains defiant. “I will be back and still be in big fights soon,” he said. “The main thing my dad told me when I was young was to never give up. If you shoot for the stars and you crash and burn along the way, just keep going. And I’m going to keep going.”
In 1997, Kostya Tszyu had one of those years. It started, both the year itself and his run of misfortune, in January when he boxed Leonardo Mas in defense of his IBF junior welterweight title, the main appeal of which was that it landed on the undercard of Oscar De La Hoya’s latest defense of his WBC junior welterweight belt. The idea, in theory, was that Tszyu would win and impress against Mas and then position himself for a fight against De La Hoya at some point should the “Golden Boy” remain in the 140-pound division. At the time Kostya looked upon this opportunity the same way Tim, his son, looked upon fighting, say, Terence Crawford; one, if it was offered to him, too good to turn down.
First, though, he had to get past Mas, an opponent easy to beat and an opponent easier to overlook. Just 20 seconds into the fight, in fact, Tszyu had managed to sweep Mas off his feet with a left hook, leaving the much taller challenger both grounded and embarrassed, though yet to have broken sweat. He then continued to nail Mas for the rest of the opener, dropping him again with a left hook, this time with 20 seconds to go in the round. This time, too, Mas seemed less sure about jumping back to his feet.
Still, to his credit, he eventually did, doing so on the count of seven, and once upright tried to hold Tszyu. It was then, during this clinch, Tszyu lined up and released a right hand, timing its release with the sound of Joe Cortez, the referee, calling for them to “break”.
It was, as is so often the case with Cortez, a messy, fussy command, one delivered with little conviction, and as a result nobody involved knew what to do. The right hand, alas, continued its path and landed on Mas and Mas, preferring again to be off his feet, sought refuge on the canvas. Now, he went down holding his eye, inferring he had been poked, and now Tszyu, sensing he had done wrong, was sent to a neutral corner. Cortez, meanwhile, tried to restore order to the disorder he himself had caused.
In truth, nobody really knew what was to happen next. All they knew was that Tszyu had released a punch a split second too late and that Mas, wanting no more, had elected to stay on the canvas upon receiving this punch, now citing a pain in the jaw. This pain was then upgraded to a “fracture” and soon both Mas and Tszyu were being informed that their fight, scheduled for 12 rounds but finished in one, was to be a technical draw on account of an unintentional illegal blow. That led to boos of dissatisfaction from the Vegas crowd. It also led to Tszyu leaving the ring in a hurry, ignoring calls for a post-fight interview.
Four months later, Tszyu was back. He returned to a different ring, in a different city, and against a different opponent, yet was still the IBF junior welterweight champion. That was the belt on the line against Vince Phillips, whom he faced in Atlantic City that May, and in Phillips he had a fighter of far greater repute and danger than Leonardo Mas, the great spoilsport of January.
Tszyu, as if eager to right past wrongs, would, despite this danger, attack Phillips from the off and showed little respect for either the American’s durability or his power. He was, you might say, reckless. He let his hands go with abandonment, often while flat-footed and in range, and this gave Phillips the opportunity to return fire and catch Tszyu’s chin high in the air or time his right hand for when Tszyu would try, and fail, to pre-emptively pull back from it.
However he got there, Phillips got there with increasing regularity as the fight progressed and by round seven had managed to buckle the legs of Tszyu and have him touch down. Until that point, Tszyu had been able to walk through these thudding right hands, yet suddenly his punch resistance had started to wane and, though he smiled upon rising, there was a sense that the tide had now turned.
It was then in the 10th round that Tszyu found himself submerged, unable to catch his breath. It started again with a right hand and now, having landed it, Phillips wouldn’t let up, buoyed somewhat by the fact that Tszyu had this time taken the shot without going down. This subtle difference in reaction had afforded Tszyu no escape route and was all Phillips needed, by way of invitation, to back the champion up to the ropes and continue throwing punches until told to stop by the referee. By the time he did, Tszyu was out on his feet, slumped in the corner, no longer smiling.
Tim Tszyu, back then, would have been blissfully unaware of his father’s pain that night, or indeed the loss itself. He had yet to turn three, you see, and therefore would have no concept of loss, either in the ring or any other context, nor any idea why his father had returned from work looking different than how he had looked when he had left. He would also have no idea that his father, rather than deterred by his first professional loss, would use it as the motivation to go undefeated for the next eight years, a 13-fight run ended only by Ricky Hatton in his final fight.
By that stage Tim Tszyu would have been 10. By that stage he knew both what his father did for a living and how essential setbacks were to not only one’s growth but the intoxicating feeling of success. In other words, he knew what it meant to keep going. He also saw his father’s pain, the physical and emotional, and found nothing to put him off.
Read the full article here
