Marvin Hagler said “it’s hard to wake up at 5am and do road work when you’re sleeping in silk pyjamas”.
For the most part, he was right.
Most fighters come from humble beginnings and have to literally fight their way to material wealth.
But slowly, the hunger fades, the edge dulls, and the reason to suffer disappears.
In fight sports, that maxim has rung true forever.
It’s ringing true again as we see Conor McGregor engaging in all manner of insane behaviour after no longer needing to fight for his family to eat.
While he still attempts to talk the talk through chattering teeth and a locked jaw, it’s clear that he isn’t willing to go to the darkest parts of his own psyche anymore because he doesn’t need to.
But it doesn’t apply to every fighter.
For some, they keep the hunger and drive long after they need the money.
Manny Pacquiao got through his childhood selling illegal cigarettes in General Santos and putting rocks in his pockets to make minimum weights, but never lost that drive after he became a rich man.
This week he fought again at 46 years old, after four years retired, and looked fitter than Mario Barrios, 17 years his junior.
Tim Tszyu is different again.
He was born in silk sheets, and he’s spent his career trying to get out of them.
His father Kostya Tszyu was a legendary boxer and is now a friend of the Russian regime, both of which made him a wealthy man.
Tim attended elite private schools and carried a surname that guaranteed him big opportunities in boxing, but it’s clear he never wanted to be another Marvis Frazier who coasted off his father’s name.
Kostya has been basically absent from Tszyu’s life and career, and Tszyu has made an effort to take as few soft touch fights as possible.
But it goes deeper than that for Tszyu. You can see how deeply he needs to prove that he’s not just a soft rich kid in the ring.
It occurred to me as I watched Fundora land leather on Tszyu’s head for fun in their most recent fight that Tszyu doesn’t roll with any punches like a Canelo Alvarez might.
He eats shots and sees if his chin will hold up.
He never moves his head the left or the right.
He occasionally fades back on punches defensively but generally he gets offended if you miss him.
He doesn’t adapt his style from being a seek and destroy missile, he just walks forward and sees what happens.
He makes everything hard on himself, in part, I think, because he needs to prove that he’s as tough as most of the other guys in his profession.
Fundora himself is a terrific counterpoint to that. In the first fight with Tszyu, Fundora came in as a giant who wouldn’t use his gifts.
He is taller than Oleksandr Usyk, the current undisputed heavyweight champion, but freely gave away his reach advantage to get into close range firefights.
https://x.com/HappyPunch/status/1946686910438478300
However, he tried to change.
In the first fight with Tszyu he tried to use his jab and keep Tszyu outside of him.
He mostly failed until Tszyu was blinded in one eye at the end of round 2, after which point Fundora was able to jab and move.
But then in this fight, as Fundora has worked to adapt to a new style, he has become better at it.
In the end was able to box the head off of Tszyu violently, but also without putting himself in any danger until Tszyu threw caution to the wind right at the end.
All while Tszyu continued to do what he’s done from the beginning of his career: walk forward, stand in front of his opponent, and hope he hurts the other guy first.
Not all of this is a criticism just of Tszyu.
His corner, which is comprised entirely of family members, deserves significant blame for his lack of evolution. But that too gets to the pathology of Tszyu. He will not be the rich kid that kicks his team to the curb when the going gets tough.
But maybe he should have.
For years he has done essentially the same thing and hoped it would work. He has not added a single string to his bow defensively, and has barely taken a lateral step in his career.
He’s too reliant on a right hand that says “back off” but not “stay down” like his father’s did.
That is a corner problem, and he has stuck with them to a fault.
Like many great athletes, Tszyu is a stubborn bastard. But that stubbornness now drives questions about what his future looks like.
Is it Michael Zerafa and more Australian-level fighters that he can beat up for fun?
Is it just being a big name for the real players at 154 to beat up?
I don’t know.
All I know is that on Sunday afternoon the silk pyjamas he was born in, the same ones he’s spent his whole career trying to shed, weighed him down as he failed to answer the bell for the eighth round against Fundora.