Tim Tszyu has revealed the dark aftermath of his father’s most devastating defeat and how, amid the bitter aftermath, he thought his own professional boxing career might be over before it even began.
Australian boxing’s most decorated father-son duo are set for an emotional reunion when Kostya escorts Tszyu to the ring to face undefeated Russian Bakhram Murtazaliev in an IBF blockbuster in Florida on Sunday.
Tszyu strives to emulate his Hall of Fame father as a multiple world champion at the Caribe Royale resort in Orlando, where Kostya will see him live for the first time since his son’s debut nine years ago in Sydney.
The son of a gun’s tryst with destiny was nothing more than a pipe dream after Kostya left his family for a new one in his native Russia some three years after suffering a career-ending beating at the hands of Ricky Hatton in 2005.
Tszyu was just a soccer-loving 10-year-old when Hatton punched and destroyed his father in Manchester, relinquishing the one-time unified world champion of his IBF super lightweight belt and sending the devastated Kostya into retirement.
“It was a difficult part of Dad’s life,” Tszyu said.
‘Then I remember my dad was going through a difficult time and it was difficult for the family. It was very hard.
‘Yes, I remember when dad lost. I don’t remember the fight much, but I remember it being a really boring feeling.
Tim Tszyu has revealed the effect his father Kostya’s most devastating defeat had on the family (father and son appear together)
Kostya Tszyu lost his IBF light welterweight title to Ricky Hatton in 2005 (pictured) after failing to get out in the twelfth round.
Tszyu has not even seen a replay of the attack on Hatton and admits the feeling of emptiness contributed to him also walking away from the sport as a young teenager and thinking he might never return.
“I kind of got hooked on boxing during that time,” he said. I honestly didn’t want anything to do with it.
“I wanted to explore other ways, especially when my father went to Russia and my mother told me: ‘oh, you have to do this, you have to go to study, you have to do that.'”
‘So I was listening to a lot of people and I guess I wasn’t my own man, and I turned on boxing because all my high school days it was boxing, boxing, boxing, you know, and you miss a lot of things.’
When Kostya left Australia, Tszyu’s mother Natasha insisted that her three children needed an education to secure their future.
While his sister Anastasia completed her nursing studies and his younger brother Nikita, now also a professional boxer and undefeated in 10 fights, spent seven years earning a degree in architecture, Tszyu quickly realized that studying was not for him.
‘I tried. “I wasn’t much of a school boy,” he chuckled.
‘I tried to go to university, I started going to university, I did a business course at UTS, but it didn’t work out. “No, it was just never going to work.”
Four years earlier, in 2001, Kostya Tszyu surprised Zab Judah in Las Vegas and at the time held the WBC, WBA and IBF belts in his weight division.
After abandoning a university degree in business, Tim Tszyu began personal training at a Sydney boxing gym, and his love for the sport soon returned (father and son are pictured in 2019).
Instead, Tszyu began training personally.
“Back in a boxing gym,” he said. ‘So I started with that and then it grew and that lit the fire again, being in the gym.
“Then I started training, well, hitting everyone and not getting hit, and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m pretty good at this.’
“I think that time (out of boxing) made me appreciate that this is what I wanted to do.”
More than a decade after his sabbatical, the 29-year-old has come full circle and can’t wait to have his father in the ring, unlike the night of his debut when ‘chaos’ reigned with Kostya omnipresent and shouting instructions to the point of distraction. .
“It’s not like I need dad there,” Tszyu said. ‘I want it there.
“I think he’s more nervous about behaving, but I’m looking forward to it.” I’m pretty excited.
“It’s a big time for me and what’s changed is the fact that I’ve grown up and know how to eliminate all distractions and it doesn’t depend on who’s around me.”
“It’s up to me.”
