Tim Tszyu has no fear

Tim Tszyu has no fear

GuyWhoLikesSport

Tim Tszyu is not trying to cash cheques off the back of his famous father’s career.

He’s trying to blaze his own trail in a sport where so often a fighter with a surname as legendary as “Tszyu” is reflexively brought down by the viewing public as a just a product of the originator of that name.

It’s happening today with Connor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. It happened with Marvis Frazier in the past.

But there are two key differences between Tim Tszyu and that other collection of fighters.

Firstly, Tim Tszyu is a world-class fighter.

 

The others wouldn’t have left the local scene if they didn’t have the help of their surname or, in the case of Connor Benn, copious amounts of steroids.

Secondly, Tim Tszyu has to carry his balls around in a wheelbarrow.

Tim Tszyu is booked to fight on Sunday afternoon AEDT against Sebastian Fundora. Tszyu is currently the WBO super welterweight champion. This fight will also be for the WBC super-welterweight championship after that belt was left vacant by Jermell Charlo, who the WBC declared to be their “champion in recess”.

You might be wondering what that means.

It doesn’t mean anything.

Boxing is dumb and the sanctioning bodies are cynical leeches who exist solely to sap money from fighters’ purses and provide no intrinsic value whatsoever.

Put simply, and ignoring boxing’s politics, Tszyu is fighting Fundora to unify the 154-pound division.

Returning briefly to boxing’s politics, Tszyu should have fought Charlo years ago for the undisputed 154-pound crown, but Charlo ducked him and then disgraced himself against Canelo and now here we are.

Tszyu v Fundora for the unified, but not undisputed, crown.

I assume that you, dear reader, have never heard of Sebastian Fundora. He is a credible but not famous super welterweight contender.

However, about a week ago, Tszyu was booked to fight Keith Thurman. Thurman is a far bigger name in boxing and was once a celebrated champion and was once a fixture on pound for pound lists. Recently he’s become a pull-out merchant of the kind that Nick Cannon should start to idolise for his own financial and emotional wellbeing.

Thurman bolstered his pull-out reputation by pulling out of his fight with Tszyu, this time with a bicep injury, just two weeks before the bout was set to be contested.

Now, I am not here to cast aspersions on the veracity of Thurman’s injury. I have no doubt that he is telling the truth.

However, while Thurman is a big name and was a good fighter, he had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Tim Tszyu.

Thurman is 35 years old and would have been coming off a 2-year layoff, which came on the heels of a three-year layoff after a loss to a 40-year-old Manny Pacquaio.

But enough about him. What does the change mean for Tim?

Thurman is an old, slick, 5’7 boxer who fights out of an orthodox stance.

Fundora is a 6’6 southpaw in his prime who loves a scrap.

They could not be more different opponents, but Tim Tszyu didn’t blink.

He has no fear.

He didn’t want to lose the date and the shot to unify the division. He knows that this fight, whoever it’s against, is the way to get to bigger and better things in boxing. Possibly including a fight with the best boxer in the world, Terrence Crawford.

While the stylistic matchup is the diametrically opposite of what Tszyu had been preparing for with Thurman, Fundora is a pretty good matchup for Tszyu.

Despite Fundora’s ridiculous size, he is not a fighter that uses his length at all.

He doesn’t jab and move. He doesn’t box at range. If anything, he’s more comfortable on the inside. He uses his length to push shorter opponents backwards and uses his length from the inside out. Once he pushes the opponent back then he’s able to put his punches together neatly. But his game doesn’t start off the jab it starts out of the clinch, a rarity for a man of his size.

Watching Fundora is like watching a red-haired sprinter. You have some cognitive dissonance.

He also uses his frame to ensure that it is hard to truly check his chin because fighters need to punch up which is especially difficult at such close range.

However, he’s not perfect. Despite his size, his chin can be checked as Brian Mendoza found out.

Turning now to Tim Tszyu: he has improved in every single fight of his career.

He has always moved in straight lines, both in attack and defence. This means he usually attacks without necessarily creating angles for his attack by footwork. He has, however, started to create angles by working the body and his hooks effectively.

In fact, Tszyu is a vicious body-puncher. For a man with a body as long as Fundora’s, that probably means a week or so of pissing blood regardless of the outcome.

While Tim does have some shades of his famous father, he is less varied than Kostya in his use of the jab. He usually throws hard and authoritative jabs whereas Kostya varied his remarkably effectively, alternating between hard and more pawing, range-finding jabs.

I suspect that more jab variation will come, maybe even in this fight if the reports are true and Kostya will be in the building.

What he did get from his father, however, is a right hand that looks like it was sent from Satan.

He also inherited an appetite for unrelenting pressure. Tszyu pushes forward constantly, irrespective of what his opponent is throwing at him. He’s like the guy who the pretty girl at a party smiled at once, and he won’t leave her alone for the rest of the night.

More than just the offence, against Harrison then Ocampo Tszyu added a level of never- before-seen defensive responsibility to his advances. In previous fights, notably against Terrell Gausha, Tszyu has been hit hard.

But that has not happened as much in recent fights.

Tszyu is a good outside fighter and an often brilliant inside fighter.

Every fight he has added a string to his bow.

So, on one side we have Tim Tszyu: a seek and destroy weapon.

One the other side we have Sebastian Fundora: easily sought, and destroyable.

It should be fireworks.

Given the last-minute change in opponent and the impossibility of preparing for the size and style of said new opponent, this should be a tough fight for Tszyu.

But it feels like there’s something special with Tim Tszyu.

It’s got nothing to do with his surname. It has everything to do with his remarkable confidence. His lack of fear.

His desire to transcend his transcendent name.

With Alex Volkanovski on the backslide, with this win Tim Tszyu should become the fighting face of our nation.

Come on, Tim!