Tim Tszyu delayed return flight to recover from defeat in hospital

Tim Tszyu delayed his departure from Orlando, Florida to go to hospital in the aftermath of his stoppage at the hands of Bakhram Murtazaliev at the Caribe Royale.

The 29-year-old suffered with concussion after being dropped by the heavy-handed Russian, 29, four times in under three rounds.

His corner threw in the towel to rescue him from further punishment in their IBF junior-middleweight title fight, and after initially monitoring him at his villa, decided to postpone his flight back to Sydney, Australia so that he could instead receive medical attention.

“Most importantly, he’s woken up okay,” said Matt Rose of his co-promoters No Limit. “Physically, he’s a lot better today. Obviously had a concussion last night, but he went to hospital – we wanted him to go for precautionary reasons. He was okay from that point of view so he’ll rest up for a couple of days now.

“Once he gets back to Australia, we’ll do some more testing to make sure he’s okay. Probably more than anything is the mental process of going back to what happened last night. The most important thing when you’re in fights like that is to ensure you do the right checks-ups.”

With many calling for Tszyu to consider a change in direction in his corner – his uncle Igor Goloubevk is also his trainer – Rose said that the fighter must decide what to do going forwards.

“I don’t get involved in the training aspect of things. Obviously, his trainers’ training and what they’ve done has been exceptional right up to this and I thought, physically, Tim was fine last night in terms of how he turned up.

“He looked great. He said it was the best he’d ever felt. We’re in a hard game. It’s boxing. Tim’s got to get punched in the face or punched in the head and sometimes things go wrong. Last night was one of those things where he got caught and couldn’t recover.

“He showed great bravery and, to be honest, there’s no other fighter like him. He’s a true warrior.”

Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].