Murtazaliev Says Tszyu “Didn’t Expect” His Left Hook

IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) says Tim Tszyu (24-2, 17 KOs) “didn’t expect” the left hook that he hurt him with initially in the second round, which made the shot doubly powerful on his third round TKO win over the former WBO champion on Saturday night at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida.

Tszyu never knew what hit him with the first left hook in round two, and it was all downhill from there. He would be the first to admit that he made mistakes in choosing to continue to trade with Murtazaliev after the initial knockdown in the second.

In hindsight, Tszyu, 29, should have boxed after the first knockdown and stayed away from Murtazaliev because he was repeatedly catching him with left hooks. Tszyu didn’t see those shots coming and was knocked down three times in round 2. That round was a nightmare for Tszyu.

Interestingly, Tszyu didn’t learn his lesson because he was still trading in round three, and his trainer had told him before going out for the round to box.

“That left hook was very powerful, and he didn’t expect it. When you don’t expect it, it’s double impact,” said Bakhram Murtazaliev, speaking to the media following his third-round TKO win over Tim Tszyu on Saturday night in Orlando.

Tszyu made zero adjustments in the fight, and he should have been able to after being dropped three times in round two. His corner told him in between rounds not to mix it up with Murtazaliev, but he went out for the third and almost immediately started throwing bombs. Tszyu’s warrior spirit got the better of him tonight.

“I was thinking in the first round about feeling his power and seeing how hard he hits,” said Murtazaliev. “A lot of people say that they can see my shots, and they’re sloppy, but he was hitting like that, too. So, I could see everything, and I wanted to counter him.”

The way that Murtazaliev was throwing his right hand was sloppy-looking, but his left hook was perfect. That’s the weapon he used repeatedly tonight to drop Tszyu. He dropped Tszyu once with a short right hand on the side of his head in the second round, but other than that, it was left hooks that were doing the damage.

“I’m just interested in unifying my title and fighting any champion there. I want to fight the champions and then move up a division,” Murtazaliev continued. “We didn’t plan anything. If it ended in the first round, it would have ended then. If it ended in the third round, I wasn’t expecting anything.”

In a perfect world, Murtazaliev will get the other champions, Terence Crawford and Sebastian Fundora, to agree to fight him. However, that doesn’t seem likely. Crawford is only interested in fighting Fundora and Canelo Alvarez.

After tonight’s performance, Murtazaliev is now the boogeyman at 154, and he’ll be avoided unless His Excellency Turki Alalshikh offers Crawford and Fundora mega-millions to fight him. In Crawford’s case, it would have been massive money because if he lost the fight, he’d never get the Canelo golden parachute retirement payday.

“I was ready to go all 12 rounds. Yeah, it was not that hard because it ended so early, and I didn’t get hit that much.