Murtazaliev-Tszyu Fight Week Diary: Day Two

Friday, October 18

Bakhram Murtazaliev-Tim Tszyu outlasted the threat posed by Hurricane Milton to remain at Orlando’s Caribe Royale, but at Friday morning’s weigh-in – the “weigh-in” seen from 4pm in the afternoon was ceremonial – it was briefly threatened by inaccurate scales.

One set showed the fighters that they were on weight. The next – those being used to officially weigh them in – showed them to be in the region of half a pound over. One fighter even left in preparation to shift the additional weight he believed that he was carrying, until promoters Premier Boxing Champions investigated and realised that the chosen scales were inaccurate, and the 11 fights scheduled were gradually approved after the fighters successfully made weight.

The extent to which, on the occasion of Murtazaliev’s first defence of his IBF junior-middleweight title, Tszyu is the attraction was again demonstrated at the ceremonial weigh-in, also at the Caribe Royale. His value to Australian broadcaster Fox’s pay-per-view platform Main Event means that he and those around him have numerous media commitments that don’t apply to the non-English speaking Murtazaliev, of Russia, but even the host of Friday’s weigh-in announced Murtazaliev – who was born in Grozny but has relocated to Oxnard, California – as living in Glendale, which unlike Oxnard forms part of Los Angeles and is an hour away. 

Perhaps his manager, the influential Egis Klimas, has also detected that his fighter is being overlooked. Klimas, who also works with, among others, the great Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko, regularly translates on behalf of his fighters, but when doing so for Murtazaliev on stage at the same ceremonial weigh-in he made little effort to hide his disinterest. Perhaps he was distracted while wondering about the whereabouts of PBC’s still-absent Tom Brown.

“Why don’t you talk about [Sebastian] Fundora’s nose?” BoxingScene was asked by another of Murtazaliev’s team – acting as a considerably more willing translator for the Russian before he left – regarding Tszyu’s previous opponent. “It was smashed. It was bloody too. Why doesn’t no one talk about that?

“They were both bloody. We’re all talking about [Tszyu’s] blood. Why?

“This guy has better PR; better marketing. They wanna market him as fighting for another title after a loss. There we go. That’s good marketing.” 

That strength of how Tszyu is marketed has regardless been enhanced by the presence of his celebrated father Kostya. Kostya’s arrival in Orlando – after he travelled from Moscow, to Istanbul, to Miami and finally from Miami to be present on Thursday – meant that he saw Tim’s younger brother Nikita for the first time in 11 years. 

Tszyu’s separation from his first wife Natasha – the mother of Tim and Nikita – had tested the strength of their bond as a family, but in 2024 those bonds have been rebuilt to the extent that it was Natasha who persuaded Nikita to pay for Kostya’s flights to be in town, therefore also guaranteeing he would attend one of Tim’s fights for the first time since December 2016. 

“She was the one who convinced Nikita,” Main Events’ Ben Damon told BoxingScene. “They’re a remarkable family that’s had a lot of focus on them [in Australia] for a long, long time. They’ve handled it really well and you can see that before in the way that Tim’s conducting himself this week and the way that they’re all handling it.”