Tim Tszyu and The Road Back: “I’ve got to find plenty of answers”

All throughout the lead-in to Saturday’s fight with IBF junior middleweight champ Bakhram Murtazaliev, Tim Tszyu and his team talked about their next moves WHEN (not if) they beat the Russian defending world titlist.

“When Tim Tszyu wins the IBF world title he becomes the name in the division,” Tszyu’s promoter George Rose of “No Limit Boxing” told Fox Sports Australia.

“And we know Crawford wants that fight. Tim just needs the belt. Because once Timmy Tszyu has that second world title, it takes him to the top of every conversation in the division. And a division where, right now, there are so many guys chasing greatness. Fighters like Terence Crawford, Errol Spence, Vergil Ortiz, all these guys looking to win world titles, create history.”

Obviously, things didn’t work out all that well for Team Tszyu as the former WBO 154 lb. champ was dropped four times en route to a third-round TKO in an unsuccessful bid to regain a world title at the Caribe Royale in Orlando, Florida.

“Look, it is what it is,” Tszyu said via social media video post Monday morning. “I got caught with a shot I just couldn’t move on. I kept getting up but that wasn’t good enough. Congrats to my opponent on a tremendous performance, but yeah, we move on, regroup, and my team will be back.

“Thank you to PBC, to No Limit for always supporting no matter what. Again, I will be back, I’ll still be in big fights soon. I’ve got to find plenty of answers from myself, of course. But the main thing my dad told me, from a young age, is to never give up. If you shoot for the stars and crash and burn on the way just keep going. I’m going to keep going and keep reaching for the stars.”

Tszyu’s split decision loss to Sebastian Fundora back in March was easy to explain away and even justify. The awkward, 6-foot-6 southpaw was a late replacement and a tough stylistic task to take on when prep had already been done to face original opponent Keith Thurman. Throw in a cut suffered in the second round that gushed blood throughout the rest of the contest, essentially blinding the second generation star, and the points loss was explainable, excusable.

This time, however, the loss came via flat-out ass-whupping.

Murtazaliev landed a big left hand near the beginning of the second round that dropped the 29-year-old Australian. Tszyu could never quite recover from that. The defending champ would then calmly take apart the already-disassembled former titlist, eventually provoking Tszyu’s corner to throw in the towel.

Prior to this fight, Tszyu was thought to be a linchpin to a deep and potentially explosive junior middleweight division.

For Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), which has worked with Tszyu and his team for the last several fights, he was considered a key player in their new deal with Amazon Prime Video as a fighter with true crossover star potential. The boxing company had chosen Tszyu as a main-eventer in their debut Prime event back in March and chose him to headline this recent show, which was the company’s first “free” card on Prime.

Now, Tszyu– and everyone banking on Tszyu– goes back to the drawing board.

As this writer stated in his Notes from the Boxing Underground column at Fight Hype:

“There are a lot of possible reasons for Tszyu getting crushed.

Maybe Tszyu was overrated all along, a solid fighter who benefited from some favorable matchmaking.

Maybe Tszyu is one of those fighters who can come into fights ill-prepared, who distracts himself with his own press clippings and/or chronically looks past the opposition in front of him. We’ve seen that on a few occasions with him throughout his career and we DID see a lot of looking past Murtazaliev during the lead-in to Saturday’s fight.

It could be that Murtazaliev is just THAT good.

It could be that Murtazaliev just happened to catch him with the right shot at the right time, on the right spot, and Tszyu couldn’t regain his bearings.

All of the above could be true.

But what we do know for certain is that Tszyu is out of the top-tier picture for now and, if he’s not, his team should take him out of it. He needs to work on his focus, his consistency and big technical issues involving his defense and the variation in his offensive attack.”

For now, Tszyu moves out of the world stage spotlight– something that could certainly be to his benefit as he works on some fundamental changes. However, he also moves back home and back to the loving embrace of Australia, where there will be a massive temptation to settle into the “big fish in a small pond” mindset, playing to home crowds in second-tier contests indefinitely.

Time will tell how fiercely the fire burns within Tim Tszyu.