Kostya Tszyu – Retiring Without Formally Retiring

By Boxing News - 01/30/2008 - Comments

By Chris Thomas: It’s been almost three years since former International Boxing Federation light welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu (31-2, 25 KOs) last fought, losing a 11th round TKO to Ricky Hatton on June 4th, 2005 at the M.E.N. Arena, Manchester, Lancashire. Afterwards, what seemed like only a brief break from boxing for Kostya, 38, has turned into three years of inactivity. Yet, even though Tszyu hasn’t thrown a punch in all this time, he still hasn’t officially retired from boxing. I’m not sure exactly what his strategy is by doing this, because it doesn’t seem that he’s going to be getting back in the ring anytime soon.

Stranger, though, is that by staying away all this time, a big fight is isn’t likely to be steered Tszyu’s way, precisely because of his time away. He’s losing fans, along with his skills, by staying away, and the new boxing fans have little idea of who Tszyu is. For me, I think he had a lot left at the time that he lost to Hatton, as it wasn’t as if he was a shot fighter like some of the top fighters that are boxing nowadays.

Tszyu almost set himself up to lose his bout with Hatton, mainly because he chose to take the fight after being inactive for almost a year. He also agreed to fight the fight in England, in front of Hatton’s home audience, even though it was Tszyu who was the champion at the time. That meant that Tszyu would be fighting in front of 50,000 screaming Hatton fans, who assist him in with their backing. To top it off, Tszyu agreed to fight the bout early in the morning hours, which would naturally hurt him, since older fighter.

Among other things, Tszyu had to drain a lot of weight off to make the 140 lb limit, further weakening him for the bout. For all that, Tszyu fought an extremely competitive bout considering everything that was seemingly stacked against him. Why then would Tszyu choose to remain inactive following such a bout?

In a way, it’s almost seems as if Tszyu is avoiding boxing because of his last fight, even though he was still fighting in championship form at the time of his last fight. Now, with all the time that has gone by since then, it seems rather doubtful that Tszyu will ever come back. I’m not sure that he wants, but even if he wanted to, he’d not fetch the kind of money that he would. I could see Tszyu coming back at this stage, and getting a fight against one of the more daring champions, maybe Junior Witter, who seems almost fearless in accepting fights.

However, Tszyu would be waiting forever if he were to select Ricky Hatton in for a potential rematch, because he’s become very particular about whom he fights since being humbled in a 10th round TKO loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. last December. I also don’t see Hatton wanting to fight Tszyu anywhere else but England, if he were to agree with fighting Tszyu. I do think that Tszyu has a little left, perhaps enough to even beat two of the junior welterweight champions, Paulie Malignaggi and Ricardo Torres. Junior Witter, however, would be too fast and elusive for Tszyu, and would likely outpoint him by a rather wide margin. In the photos I’ve seen of Tszyu lately, he’s looking at least 30-40 lbs above his former fighting weight of 140 lbs.

If he were to plan on coming back, he’d have to think about taking the weight off slowly this time around, rather than melting down quickly and shedding 30 lbs within a couple of months, which is what some people are saying that he did before fighting Hatton. If Tszyu goes into a fight like that, it’s no wonder that he wouldn’t be at his best, because draining weight like that tends to weaken a fighter. Just ask Roy Jones Jr.