Tim Tszyu To Regroup After Loss To Murtazaliev

Tim Tszyu posted on social media today a message to the fans, saying that he’ll be coming back to be in big fights despite losing to IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) by a third-round knockout last Saturday night in Orlando, Florida.

Tszyu says he’s going to seek answers from his team for what went wrong in his loss to Murtazaliev. Tim’s defense failed him in that fight, and he made a mistake by continuing to attack Murtazaliev rather than boxing him after the initial knockdown.

When explaining what happened, Tszyu (24-2, 17 KOs) says he got caught with a punch and couldn’t recover from it. He kept getting up but wasn’t going to work.

Murtazaliev knocked the former WBO 154-lb champion Tszyu initially with a left hook during an exchange in round two. That was where things fell apart for the 29-year-old Tszyu because he never recovered from that shot. What chance Tszyu had of coming back, he threw it away by going on the attack and trying to slug with Murtazaliev.

“I got caught with a shot, and I couldn’t move on. I kept getting up, but that wasn’t good enough,” said Tim Tszyu, reflecting on his loss to IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev last Saturday night in Orlando.

Tszyu and his team must make the right move for his next fight because he’s now lost his last two contests. He lost to Sebastian Fundora earlier this year by a 12-round split decision on March 30th, but fans gave him a pass for that defeat due to a bad cut that he suffered in round two.

The defeat against Murtazaliev was a different story. The IBF champ completely blew out Tszyu, knocked down four times in the fight before his corner threw in the towel in round three.

“Congrats to my opponent for the tremendous performance. Yeah, we move on, regroup, and my team will be back,” said Tszyu. “Again, I will be back. I’ll still be in big fights soon, and I got to find plenty of answers from myself, of course.”

It will be very difficult for Tszyu to rebuild himself after the latest defeat because many of the top fighters in the 154-lb division will expose his flaws in the fight. Even the younger fighters like Yoenis Tellez would take advantage of what Murtazaliev exposed.

“The main thing my dad [Kostya Tszyu] told me from a young age, ‘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 them stars,” said Tim.

Tszyu may need to swallow his pride and return to fighting domestic-level position in Australia rather than staying at the world level and continuing to suffer defeats. These are some good options for Tszyu’s next fight: Michael Zerafa and Steve Spark.