By Matt Lieberman: Tim Tszyu expects his fight this Saturday night to be a regular “barnburner” against the powerful slugger Carlos Ocampo on June 17 on Showtime at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia.
Tszyu-Ocampo will headline on Showtime, with the event starting at 10 pm ET. The unbeaten Tszyu (22-0, 16 KOs) will be defending his WBO interim junior middleweight title that he won last March in a ninth round knockout victory over Tony Harrison.
Ocampo (35-2, 23 KOs) is being used as a stay-busy fight for the 28-year-old Tszyu, but a dangerous one. The big punching Ocampo lost to Sebastian Fundora by a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision last October.
Ocampo’s other defeat on his record came earlier in his career when he was blown out in the first round by Errol Spence in 2018.
Tim is waiting for his guaranteed title shot against undisputed junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo, who has been nursing a broken arm for the past eight months.
Rather than sit on the sidelines waiting for Charlo to possibly return to the ring one day, Tszyu has chosen to stay busy by taking tune-ups. He’s already had one against the former WBC 154-lb champion Harrison.
When it became clear Charlo still wasn’t ready to return to the front lines, Tszyu chose to take a second warm-up fight, this time against the 27-year-old Ocampo.
Given that Tszyu wins on Saturday, he expects his fight with Jermell to take place in October. If the contest happens that month, Jermell would be coming off a 17-month layoff, which isn’t ideal for him because it’s a long time to be out of the ring without at least one tune-up.
Tim Tszyu staying active
“In all honesty, I’m just staying active, not letting my career just blow past me and watch it on the sideline,” said Tim Tszyu to Morning Kombat when asked why he’s fighting Carlos Ocampo this Saturday night.
“You can only hope for,” said Tszyu when asked if he thinks the fight with Jermell Charlo will ever happen. “13 months is a long time to stay out of the ring, especially at the peak of your career. You should be maximizing every opportunity.
“It’s not going to last forever. So I think on his terms, it’s probably not ideal to be staying on the sideline. For me, I just keep plodding along, keep doing what I do, and yeah, it’s going to be inevitable anyway.
“Yeah, for sure. I think it’s playing in his part that I am getting better, I am getting more comfortable, and the stars are aligning towards my favor, and when we do meet, which we will meet sometime, it’s going to be ending in a bad way for him.
“I think in the super welterweight division, I think Tony Harrison’s got probably the most superior boxing skills. His IQ is up there at the very, very top, and he comes from a bloodline of boxers. I knew to be able to send that message, even though I had the Jermell Charlo, I had [guaranteed] shot at the fight; I could have waited. I wanted to send uh that message there.
“‘You know what? I fear no one. I will take on anyone, even if I’ve got opportunities. I’ll risk it all.’ That’s the message that I wanted to send out, and I think the message was loud and clear.
“You know, I’ve sort of heard that my whole life, even from the start of my career from the first fight onwards, ‘You’re not your Daddy.’ That’s basically what everyone’s saying.
“It was a clear message for me to send it out there. I am my own man, and don’t judge me by my last name but judge me by my first name I am my own character, and I’ve created my own path to be here.
“Yeah, Dad was quite happy. He was quite happy with the performance. He’s always a critic anyway, so he was saying a few things, but yeah, it’s all good. It sort of shocked him,” said Tszyu about hurting Tony Harrison in round three. “He knew that he wasn’t in with what he had expected. It wasn’t an easy fight that he expected.
“He thought he was going to just completely out-School me in that, and I knew I was levels above what he was thinking. That I was, so yeah, the power definitely did show. Mike Tyson’s got a famous saying, ‘Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face,’ and that was the perfect response to that,” Tszyu said.
Tszyu 100% after arm injury
“It was pretty crazy to be able to walk out like that with everyone’s roaring; everyone’s gone crazy,” said Tszyu about his walkout for the Tony Harrison fight. “I guess I could say it’s an honor for me, and even the next one for me, the Ocampo fight that’s now happening, sold out less than a month before the fight.
“The results are speaking for themselves, and I’m blessed to be able to
have this opportunity for the whole nation to just grab me on board
and the support’s amazing.
“I think I think a bit of both. I think the MMA scene is big as well, with Alex Volkanovsky leading the pack as number one in the UFC. Yeah, it’s a fan-friendly fight. You go two similar styles going at it. It’s like Pitbull vs. Pitbull. So you see which Pitbull falls first, and I know it ain’t going to be me.
“I got 25 stitches, but it’s all good now. I sort of just brushed it off, continued on, and whatever. It is what it is. You just got to go through it. It was a mate’s dog, and it just happened out of nowhere. I went to try to pat it, and he just attacked me.
“Yeah, I love dogs, man, and I couldn’t believe that happened. Now, I’m sort of staying away from any type of animal. Everything’s good, man. I’m thinking that it’s going to be Charlo. Sometime in October, we can get around and just give the fans the fight the super welterweight division needs,” said Tim.
Tszyu-Ocampo = barnburner
“I feel like I’ve got a couple of fights left in me at 154, but my eventual future, later on, will be at 160 and 168,” Tszyu said. I think the happiness it brings people you see on a daily route type of routine is all that matters. If you can make someone smile and make their day, that’s the least I could do.
“I feel the support is unbelievable for me. So I just take it or leave it. Sometimes, man, I can never refuse a photo or an autograph. I just feel like it would be wrong of me.
“It could be number one, and it’s quite simple. That’s Charlo, and even if let’s say, Charlo vacates his belts, I still want to be the top dog in the division. To be the top dog of the division, you’ve got to beat the man.
“That’s all I want in this weight division right now is Charlo. I would love to find at middleweight one day and even super middleweight. So that’s definitely in my path in the future when I was sparring with people on a national level in Australia and sort of smashing them without even trying.
“Just a barnburner in the pocket with two people going at it,” said Tszyu when asked what boxing fans should expect to see in his fight against Carlos Ocampo this Saturday night.
