Tim Tszyu has revealed the dark aftermath to his father’s most devastating defeat and how, amid the bitter fallout, 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 walks Tszyu to the ring to face unbeaten Russian Bakhram Murtazaliev in an IBF blockbuster in Florida on Sunday.
Tszyu is striving to emulate his Hall of Famer dad as a multiple world champion at the Caribe Royale resort in Orlando, where Kostya will watch live for the first time since his son’s debut nine years ago in Sydney.
The son of a gun’s date with destiny was but a pipedream after Kostya left his family for a new one in his native Russia some three years after suffering a career-ending pummelling at the hands of Ricky Hatton in 2005.
Tszyu was only a soccer-loving 10-year-old when Hatton battered and broke his father in Manchester, relinquishing the one-time unified world champ of his IBF super-lightweight belt and sending the shattered Kostya into retirement.
“It was a hard part in dad’s life,” Tszyu told AAP.
“So I remember my dad was going through a bit and it was hard for the family. It was very hard.
“Yeah, I remember when dad lost. I don’t remember the fight too much but I remember it was a real dull-type feeling.”
Tszyu has never even watched a replay of the Hatton bashing and admits the empty feeling contributed to he too walking away from the sport as a young teenager, and figuring he might never return.
“In all honesty, I sort of turned on boxing during that time,” he said.
“I didn’t want nothing to do with it, in all honesty.
“”I wanted to explore other ways, especially when my dad left for Russia and my mum was saying, ‘oh, you gotta do this, you gotta go study, you gotta do that’.
“So I was listening to too many people and I wasn’t my own man, I guess, and I turned on boxing because throughout my whole high school days it was boxing, boxing and boxing, you know, and you miss out on a lot of things.”
When Kostya left Australia, Tszyu’s mother Natasha insisted all three of her children needed an education to secure their futures.
While his sister Anastasia completed nursing qualifications and younger brother Nikita – who is now also a professional boxer and unbeaten in 10 fights – spent seven years gaining an architecture degree, Tszyu quickly realised studying wasn’t his thing.
“I tried to. I wasn’t much of a school guy,” he chuckled.
“Tried to go to uni, started going to uni, doing a business course at UTS, but that didn’t work out.
“No, it was just never going to work out.”
Instead Tszyu started personal training.
“Back at a boxing gym,” he said.
“So I started with that and then it just sort of grew and that lit the fire again, being in the gym.
“Then I started sparring, well, sort of cracking everyone and not getting hit and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m pretty good at this’.
“I guess that time (away from boxing) made me appreciate that this is what I wanted to do.”
More than decade after his sabbatical, the 29-year-old has come full circle and can’t wait to have his father ringside, unlike the night of his debut when “chaos” reigned with Kostya omnipresent and screaming instructions to the point of distraction.
“It’s not that I need dad there,” Tszyu said.
“I want him there.
“I think he’s more nervous about behaving himself, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m quite excited.
“It’s a big moment for me and what has changed is the fact that I’ve grown and I know how to eliminate all distractions and it’s not up to who’s around me.
“It’s up to myself.”
