Tim Tszyu will fight for championship belts with Sebastian Fundora

In the story of another important fight of one of the brightest stars of modern professional boxing, the son of Russian legend Konstantin Tszyu, Tim Tszyu, there was an unexpected and intriguing turn. On March 30, his opponent will not be the famous American Keith Thurman, who was injured, but his compatriot Sebastian Fundora, who stands out for his enormous height for a junior middleweight (up to 69.9 kg). Thanks to this, Tszyu, who now has to figure out in a week and a half how to fight an inconvenient opponent, got the opportunity to add the World Boxing Council (WBC) title to the World Boxing Organization (WBO) championship title.

Promotion company Premier Boxing Champions has announced a change in the centerpiece fight lineup for its major show, which will take place in Las Vegas on March 30. It is associated with a biceps injury to one of its participants, the famous American Keith Thurman. Instead, Thurman’s compatriot Sebastian Fundora will fight with Tim Tszyu, representing Australia, the son of Russian boxing legend Konstantin Tszyu.

We are talking about another interesting turn in the career of Tszyu Jr., who competes in the up to 69.9 kg category, who by his 29 years has acquired a reputation as a superstar without any reservations. His record includes 24 victories in 24 fights, and the vast majority of them were extremely convincing. This also applies to three fights with strong opponents that took place last year. Tszyu knocked out Tony Harrison in the ninth round, Carlos Ocampo in the first, and defeated Brian Mendoza on points with a huge advantage.

It was expected that after winning against Mendoza, the Australian would face a match with American Jermell Charlo, who once held all four championship belts – the World Boxing Organization, the World Boxing Council, the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the International Boxing Federation (IBF) – in the junior middleweight division. .

Negotiations about it have been going on for quite some time. Moreover, at the end of 2022, the agreement already looked practically agreed upon. But Charlo, who initially took a long break due to a hand injury, made an unexpected feint. Having recovered, he chose a more financially profitable fight with the enormously popular Mexican Saul Alvarez in the super middleweight, in which Alvarez is also the absolute champion, over the fight with Tszyu. The WBO did not like this jump, and she announced in advance that in any case, no matter what happened to Charlo, she would give her title to the official challenger who had been waiting for a long time, that is, Tszyu. He lost to Charlo Alvarez, and still avoids the match against Tszyu in the “native” category for both.

Another American with an excellent track record, Keith Thurman, was chosen to replace Jermell Charlo. True, all his successes belonged to the rather distant past, and in recent years, 35-year-old Thurman fought extremely rarely, unlike Sebastian Fundora, who is at his peak, who is only 26. However, in April 2023, Fundora suffered the first defeat in his career, having run into for a knockout in the WBC interim title match against Brian Mendoza. But Mendoza’s loss to Tszyu, coupled with Charlo’s virtual refusal to compete in the middleweight division, allowed him to once again claim the title of this structure, now completely full. He was supposed to fight for it at the same show in Las Vegas with Ukrainian Sergei Bogachuk. Now the WBC belt is on the line in his fight with Tim Tszyu, along with the WBO belt.

Wherein ESPN notes that it was the Australian who found himself in a difficult situation due to the substitution.

The fact is that Bogachuk, for whom Sebastian Fundora was preparing, is similar to Tim Tszyu in terms of anthropometry and style. But you can’t really say about Fundora that he looks like Thurman or, in principle, like any of the welterweights and middleweights. All because of the huge height of the American left-hander by the standards of the category – 198 cm – and the colossal length of his arms. Tszyu had never encountered such opponents before, and his sparring partners in the training camp were of ordinary size.

Alexey Dospehov