Tim Tszyu Needs to Change

There’s a great big gaping hole in the Australian sporting landscape.

 

We’ve always got the AFL and the NRL and their women’s affiliates.

 

Then there’s our national teams like the Socceroos, Matilda’s and the cricket teams.

 

We’ve also always got a fighter.

 

It was Kostya Tszyu and Jeff Fenech through the 90s, Anthony Mundine and Danny Green through the 2000s and 2010s (dark days), and Alexander Volkanovski in the late 2010s to early 2020s

 

Now we’re in the 2020s and Volkanovski, much to my sadness, is slipping after having been knocked out in consecutive fights.

 

There’s a breach ready to be stepped into.

 

I thought Tim Tszyu, son of The Thunder from Down Under, was the man to step into that breach.

 

I fear that I was wrong.

 

Tszyu has now lost consecutive fights to high-level but not truly elite competition. The first, a loss to Sebastian Fundora whom he accepted on short notice, was very much acceptable.

 

That was a fight where Tszyu lost the fight but won the night. He fought on with blood pissing into his eye for 10 rounds and lost a close decision that could have gone either way.

 

But that loss was a precursor to what happened on Sunday afternoon in Tszyu’s dramatic, destructive loss to Bakhram Murtazaliev (AEDT). Tsyzu was dropped violently four times in the fight on the way to the only non-competitive loss of his career.

 

I wrote after the Fundora fight that Tszyu’s cutman, Mark Gambin, “needed to be replaced”. I observed this after having spent an afternoon observing blood leaking unobstructed from Tszyu’s head into his eye and his cut man appearing to have no answers but to rub some more Vaseline on the cut between rounds, like he was a virgin who didn’t have the gumption to buy real lube at woollies.

 

My position on Gambin, who wasn’t in the corner for the Murtazaliev fight but only because he was sick, hasn’t changed. He still needs to go.

 

So does the rest of Tszyu’s corner.

I thought that after the Fundora fight when they didn’t throw in the towel after the cut, and I think it now.

 

Tszyu is not short on natural talent. He has a big right hand, pretty good timing, and he has a relentless appetite to apply pressure to his opponents.

 

What I just described is Tszyu’s Plan A.

 

He wants to walk forward at all costs, usually without jabbing, get close enough to load up and launch his right hand behind an unsubstantial set up jab and win with the 1-2.

 

While he’s not a prolific body puncher, he is a good one and he occasionally mixes in an absolutely savage liver shot usually off the right hand.

 

In the process of this usual forward moving pattern, Tszyu doesn’t change angles and his defence reminds me of The Joker in The Dark Knight screaming “HIT ME!”.

 

He essentially only defends by getting into a double cover while walking forward, or fading backwards. Sophisticated punchers, like Murtazaliev, can punch through that with superior timing and double attacks.

 

Murtazaliev, for instance, scored three of his four knockdowns on left hooks after Tszyu’s double cover failed him, or by timing while Tszyu was trying to load up and throw yet another of the same jab-cross combination.

 

Unfortunately, for a fighter with Tszyu’s lack of defensive prowess, he also has a serious degree of pride and toughness, which kept him getting up after truly enormous punches landed right on his chin.

 

The bad news is that all of the above is also Tszyu’s Plan B, C, and D.

 

And it has been for virtually his entire career.

 

The only growth that he has shown since his first professional fight is a marginally, but nowhere enough, improved jab.

 

In Tszyu’s corner he had Igor Goloubevk as head trainer, who is Tim Tszyu’s uncle and Kostya Tszyu’s brother-in-law. He also had his brother Nikita in there, among other family members.

 

This is boxing, not family Christmas. It’s not meant to be a family reunion every day in the gym.

 

Beyond that, Tszyu would seriously benefit from a new voice. It appears to me that his trainer/uncle is aware of Tszyu’s last name and wants everyone to remember that Tim is Kostya’s boy.

 

But Tim doesn’t have Kostya’s truly atomic power for his size, nor does he have Kostya’s sense of timing. 

 

Kostya had 270 amateur fights, 259 of them wins.

 

Tim had 34.

 

He doesn’t have Kostya’s innate sense of when and how to punch.

 

Therefore, he needs to do more than Kostya did.

 

He needs to jab more substantially and enter his opponent’s range behind that jab.

 

He needs to stop loading up and trying to punch as hard as he can every time he throws.

 

He needs to move his head from side to side instead of just forward and back. He needs to vary his style of defence.

 

He needs to box less like he has the turning circle of a tank, and create the occasional angle to do something wild and throw a hook. 

 

At 29, I haven’t seen any growth from Tim from the start of his professional career, and as opponents get better, you can’t keep coasting on what has worked in the past.

 

You’re not Jason Statham. You can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect it to work. This is professional sport. You need to adjust and grow.

 

I don’t doubt Tszyu’s talent, work ethic, or heart, nor do I doubt that he belongs near the top of the 154-pound division.

 

I do doubt his corner.

 

Without making a change, Tszyu risks being a less talented, less accomplished version of Teofimo Lopez.

 

A one trick pony whose trick isn’t working like it used to.

 

For a fighter like Tszyu, who relies on bringing a bigger gun to the fire fight, to get beaten like that might seriously impact his mentality moving forward. A man whose nickname is The Soul Taker just had his soul taken. I have no idea how he reacts.

But if he’s able to dust himself, as I assume he will given his mental toughness, he needs to make a change.

 

That’s how he steps into the breach that Volk is slowly leaving.

 

The country is relying on it.