As Vergil Ortiz Jr. readies to take on Serhii Bohachuk for an interim junior middleweight title in a headline fight Saturday night at Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, it’s impossible not to address the elephant in the room.
In this case, that elephant looks a lot like a bloodied 154-pound Australian son of a boxing legend. Tim Tszyu (24-1, 17 KOs) has had some of the hardest luck of any fighter in 2024, and it is only now beginning to turn. Tszyu fell out of a brilliant matchup with Ortiz due to complications from a cut he suffered against Sebastian Fundora in March – which also cost him his undefeated record and junior middleweight title. In July, Tszyu, finally recovered, lost his chance to headline the first standalone PBC card on Prime Video when opponent Erickson Lubin dropped out because of his own injury.
But now Tszyu – the 29-year-old son of Hall of Famer Kostya Tszyu – has an upcoming fight date (Sept. 22) at home in Australia, and may get a chance to trade up from an eliminator match to a title shot, assuming fate doesn’t intervene in an ordered matchup with belt holder Bakhram Murtazaliev.
A single professional defeat and all the accompanying adversity aren’t likely to dim Tszyu’s star, according to ProBox TV “Top Stories” analysts Paulie Malignaggi and Chris Algieri. If anything, Malignaggi said, Tszyu figures to return with a chip on his shoulder and a burning determination to prove he isn’t the fighter who fell to Fundora under extenuating circumstances.
“It’s a different kind of mentality,” Malignaggi said. “Not everybody has this kind of mentality. Tszyu has it.
“I was picking him to be the future of this weight class.”
Tszyu has consistently pushed himself through each stage of development, and he doesn’t seem interested in a soft touch to get his mind right and ease back into title contention. Lubin is a prime southpaw who has lost only to Jermell Charlo and Fundora, and Murtazaliev (22-0, 16 KOs) is untested but considered formidable. One gets the sense that Tszyu would step in today for Bohachuk to face Ortiz if given the chance.
“It’s always fun when you’ve got a fighter who not only is good but also wants all the smoke at an age where he still hasn’t developed his full potential yet,” Malignaggi said.
If Ortiz bests Bohachuk on Saturday and Tszyu bounces back – perhaps against Murtazaliev in September – a potential Tszyu-Ortiz matchup might only swell to greater proportions than it had reached back in March. There is plenty of runway left for Tszyu to launch a career that, regardless of his lineage, stands alone for its quality.
“He’s been consistently blazing his own trail, regardless of who his father is and what his namesake is,” Algieri said of Tszyu. “He wants to be his own man, be his own champion. You can see that in the way he moves, the way he talks during interviews, and I think this is just the next step to him getting his career back on track.”
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