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So much of the lore around boxing is built on the poverty or hardship experienced by its participants.
Almost every boxing documentary starts with the story of a fighter’s childhood, often replete with tragedy and struggle. Take any famous fighter today and their early challenges are now the stuff of legend.
From the extraordinarily tragic and impoverished early life of Johnny Tapia, to the middle class but racially trying late teens of then Cassius Clay, there is always a tale of hardship, that lends to the story of a legendary fighter.
Take even a modern-day star in Gervonta Davis, who grew up in West Baltimore on the streets that The Wire was set on. His long-time trainer Calvin Ford was the inspiration for the character Dennis “Cutty” Wise in the show, the man who opens up a boxing gym for Baltimore’s otherwise hopeless youth in season three of the show.
The tragedy and hardship in these fighters’ early lives is invariably portrayed as an ever-present motivator while in the ring and during training. Fighters have talked about feeling as if they will be forced back to a life of poverty if they don’t get up after being knocked down, if they don’t keep fighting. The life of poverty is the eternal flame that powers so many fighters’ careers.
Tim Tszyu has no such tragedy punctuating his life. His father was a legend. He went to elite Sydney schools. His brother is an architect/boxer.
Yet the chip on Tszyu’s shoulder is as big as anybody else’s in the sport today. It isn’t hard to work out why Tszyu fights as hard as he does, why he is as driven as he is. We all knew why before he knocked out Tony Harrison in his best professional bout to date, but he confirmed it in the ring afterwards.
Tszyu channelled Muhammad Ali’s destruction of Ernie Terrell multiple times, screaming “What’s my mother####ing name?” into the microphone during the post-fight interview. He was not asking for Tszyu to be yelled by the Sydney crowd. We all know that name. We’ve known it since Kostya knocked out Pedro Sanchez in 1994.
He wanted them to yell Tim.
During the Harrison bout it was hard not to see shades of his legendary father, even despite their major size difference. Kostya passed down to Tim a demonic, thudding, right hand. Tim also inherited his father’s extraordinary appetite for applying pressure on the opponent. Tim stuck to Harrison like he 16-year-old boy who thinks he has a shot with the hot girl at a party.
Harrison, who I wrongly thought would be too slick with his movement for Tszyu’s straightforward style, was unable to get him off. Eventually pressure told and, unlike that 16-year-old, Tim sealed the deal.
Tim’s father Kostya: one of Australia’s greatest ever boxers. (Photo by Zotov Alexey/Kommersant via Getty Images)
The other thing Tim and Kostya have in common is that they are forever unfazed. The circumstances do not bother these men. Tim talks more than Kostya ever did, who retained a constant and menacing air of disinterest in any antics engaged with by an opponent. But in the ring, they have a similar demeanour.
Their expression doesn’t change, irrespective of what position the fight is in. Look at how Tim finished Harrison off. He didn’t hurry. He stayed calm, bided his time, and when the time came to end the fight, he put his foot on the accelerator and that was that.
However, Tim throws his jab with more authority and more consistently than Kostya did. Kostya had an extremely effective and at times borderline dominant jab, but he also often used his lead hand in a pawing fashion, as a first line of defence and as a distraction to set-up to that atomic right hand.
Tim is less varied with his lead hand than Kostya was, but he throws more hooks and is occasionally devastating to the body in a way that Kostya was not.
There are shades of Kostya in every menacing step forward that Tim takes, every violent right hand that he throws, but Tim is his own fighter.
Now, I presume, Tim will follow in his father’s footsteps and attempt to become the undisputed champion of the world. Kostya did it by knocking out the highly touted, extremely fast southpaw Zab Judah with one of the greatest punches in the history of professional boxing. Tim has a different challenge entirely, fighting the current undisputed 154-pound champion Jermell Charlo.
Despite only 19 of his 35 wins coming by way of knockout, Charlo is an extremely powerful and talented fighter and is worthy of his status as undisputed champion. However, as we saw in the first bout against Brian Castano, he does not react well to heavy pressure.
Pressure is all that Tszyu knows. He does not do anything fancy. He walks down opponents, throws heavy leather usually in short, fundamentally sound combinations, and eventually saps them of their will to compete.
If Tim is responsible defensively like he was against Harrison, he can beat Charlo and match his father’s greatest accomplishment. But Tim Tszyu is his own man, and he wants everyone to know it.
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