Sergio Mora was in awe of IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev last weekend, saying he reminded him of the great Alexis Arguello with the way he looked when he knocked out former WBO champion Tim Tszyu in three rounds at the Caribe Royale resort in Orlando, Florida.
Murtazaliev’s Precise Punches
Commentator Mora says he realized in the first minute and twenty seconds of the fight that Tszyu was in trouble because Murtazaliev looked Arguello-like and threw short punches with precision. Tszyu made things easier for Murtazaliev by going right at him and trying to start a war, but he was destroyed.
Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) came into the fight with a broken knuckle on his right hand, which is normally the main weapon in his arsenal. He adjusted well to the injury and used his left hook to repeatedly drop Tszyu (24-2, 17 KOs) to the canvas in a four-knockdown performance.
Mora feels it was bad matchmaking on the part of Tszyu’s team to choose to match him against the mighty Murtazaliev in his first fight after suffering his first career loss to the 6’6″ Sebastian Fundora on March 30th. He feels that Tszyu should have received a confidence booster instead.
“In the first minute of the first round, I realize that this guy is going to give Tim Tszyu problems,” Sergio Mora told the Chris Mannix YouTube. channell, talks about Bakhram Murtazaliev’s destruction of Tim Tszyu last weekend.
“It only took me one minute and twenty seconds to realize this guy was going to be a headache. He had a laser-like right hand, the uppercut and the hook, which he eventually dropped. He reminded me in the first minute when he missed that right hand, and he threw a left hook like an Alexis Arguello.”
Murtazaliev did not use his right hand much in the fight. Most of the big shots he landed were with his left hook, and it was almost like he was fighting with only one arm.
“They are laser-like, waste no space, and the technique is perfect. It’s not speed that gets you; it’s not strength that gets you. It’s time and accuracy. That’s what I saw with Murtazaliev when he missed that first right hand, and then he threw that left hook and caught that right uppercut,” Mora said.
It was surprising to see how well Murtazaliev fought in close quarters, as taller fighters usually need a lot of space to generate power on their punches. This was not the case with Murtazaliev. He seemed to hit harder from the inside than from the outside, and it was strange but devastating.
“I said, ‘This man is going to be trouble.’ Even if they didn’t land clean, it was going to be a long night for Tim Tszyu. It ended up being a short night because it was a three-round war that he was on the end of, but bad matches because you go from a 6’6″ saltpaw to an unknown, strong, undefeated Russian titleholder. Mora said.
Tszyu didn’t seem to have done any research into Murtazaliev’s past fights to know what he was getting himself into by fighting this man. Looking at his recent win over Jack Culcay, he would have rejected him as an opponent.
