It’s not a strong enough opponent to determine whether Tszyu has anything left in the tank to continue fighting the best in the junior middleweight division. Still, it’s a fight that will give a glimpse into whether Tim’s punch resistance is still intact. He has been stopped in two of his last three fights.
Although 29-year-old American Velazquez is undefeated, he has fought non-world-class opponents at the sub-level throughout his seven-year professional career.
Tszyu’s management got him somewhere. His undefeated record supports the fight being shown on PPV in Australia. The match received very little attention because the opponent is not known.
Tszyu comes into Wednesday’s fight off a seventh-round stoppage in his rematch with WBC 154-lb champion Sebastian Fundora last July. His performance in that fight was a huge drop from his first contest against ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora last year.
The shots that Tim van Fundora was able to take in their first fight bothered him in the rematch. Tszyu was down in round one and was slowly beaten down by Fundora until the fight was stopped in the seventh.
Tim hasn’t looked like the same fighter since he was stopped in the third round by IBF champion Bakhram Murtazaliev last year. That fight took something out of Tszyu. He was knocked down four times in this competition.
Tszyu (31) replaced his long-time coach, Igor Goloubev, with the well-known Cuban coach Pedro Diaz in the hope of revamping his game. The obvious way for Tszyu to rebuild would be to box more and be more selective in the exchanges he chooses with his opponents.
Wednesday’s Tszyu vs. Velazquez event will be on December 17 at the TikTok Entertainment Center in Sydney, Australia.
