Hearn: Tim Tszyu not ready for elite level, needs confidence boost

Promoter Eddie Hearn says he is not sure if Tim Tszyu is at an “elite level” after watching his consecutive 2024 losses to IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev and Sebastian Fundora.

Rebuild Tszyu

Hearn feels that Tszyu’s promoters believed he was better than he really was and put him in fights that were above his level. Now he has suffered consecutive defeats and his career is in danger. Eddie says if he were Tszyu’s promoter he would bring him back to Australia and give him a “confidence booster” type fight. You need to rebuild your trust.

The way Tszyu (24-2, 19 KOs) was destroyed in three rounds by Murtazaliev on October 19 was a warning sign that he is not fighting at an elite level. Tszyu, the former WBO 154-pound champion, made no adjustments after the first knockdown, and came into the fight with a poor game plan of fighting one of the division’s best punchers.

“I’m a big fan of Tim Tszyu. I think he is a great fighter. Sometimes you can believe your own hype as a fighter a little bit, and I think they felt Tim was unbeatable,” Eddie Hearn told Jai McAllister. youtube channeltalking about the management of former WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu, who pitted him a little too hard against Bakhram Murtazaliev.

“I really admire that they accepted that fight, and they should have accepted that fight (Bakhram) because it is for a world championship. But no one really wants to fight that guy because he’s a serious, no-brainer guy. So if he beats you, you think, but I like the fact that they did it, and I like the fact that he’s a real fighter.

“Sometimes you can get carried away. There is a huge difference between fighting in Australia and the Australian market and then going out on the world stage and facing elite opposition. You saw him against (Sebastian) Fundora, and he (Tszyu) had a lot of bad luck in that fight with the injury and everything,” Hearn said.

Tsyu will need to develop more as a boxer because there are fighters in the 154-pound division with better offensive ability than him. Some of them, like Murtazaliev, Serhii Bohachuk and Vergil Ortiz Jr, have the same power, if not better. It’s worrying that Tim hasn’t made any adjustments in either of his last two fights against Bakhram and Fundora when things were going badly for him. He continued to move forward, running into shots and being hit.

“But you can’t just walk around people at that level,” Hearn said of Tszyu. “You have to be cuter than that, and Tim was built off of that. I love watching Tim Tszyu. It’s very, very exciting, but you really don’t want too many fights like that. “It will really shorten your career and it will be interesting to see what they do with it when it comes back.”

Before Tim’s fight with Murtazaliev you could see that he was going to have problems with this guy if he didn’t change his style and use a different approach. He thought he could knock him out like he had against lesser fighters like Carlos Ocampo, Tony Harrison and Steve Spark. He discovered that they are much better than those imperfect guys and now his career is suffering for his mistake.

Elite level gap

“I think the question about Tim Tszyu is whether he really is at an elite level,” Hearn said. “He is a world-class fighter; there is no doubt about it. But is it really at that level? Maybe. I think the jury is out. There is no shame in that. “Sometimes you get to that level and you’re not good enough.”

Tszyu is obviously not an elite fighter, but Hearn is being diplomatic by not telling it like it is. He’s a contender level fighter at the mid-range level, but nowhere near the top. If you put Tszyu with former 154-pound champions Serhii Bohachuk and Israil Madrimov, it would end badly for him.

“If I were his promoter, I would probably fight him here (Australia) and get him a confident win against a top 15 guy, and then go back to the United States. One thing you know. It’s essential to watch TV, Tim Tszyu. He’s not going to struggle to get opportunities because people think they can beat him and it’s great to see,” Hearn said.