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Lost in the four knockdowns and bruising punches that forced Tim Tszyu’s camp to throw in the towel was another moment early in the first round of his loss to Bakhram Murtazaliev — and according to News Corp’s Peter Badel it should have “alarm bells” ringing.
Tszyu suffered a shock second-straight defeat on Sunday against the undefeated Russian, conceding after the fight that the “better man won” as Terence Crawford’s prediction came true.
While Murtazaliev’s power and the way Tszyu crumbled to the canvas time and time again will haunt the memory of Australian boxing fans, there was another moment much earlier in the fight which, in hindsight, seemingly foreshadowed his demise.
Tszyu, who suffered a gruesome cut to the forehead in his loss to Sebastian Fundora, reached for the same spot after one strike from Murtazaliev to check if there was blood.
While nothing was there, that instinctual response served as a precursor to what was to come.
“It was almost like muscle memory… that to me suggests there’s some psychological scar tissue from Fundora,” Badel said after the fight on Main Event.
“I’m shocked at how Tim fought that fight. He’s usually such a great executioner and he’s so disciplined with his boxing IQ but I thought his brain went out the window for braun and you don’t fire with fire with Murtazaliev.”
US boxing great Shawn Porter, meanwhile, used the analogy of a car crash to make a similar point.
“That car crash I told you about earlier, when that crash happens you have instant PTSD of what previously happened,” Porter said.
“I thought he was going to touch it, he was going to see that it didn’t bleed and it was going to give him confidence — nothing to worry about, I won’t focus on that anymore.
“But those are things again, when you get in the car and start driving you never know when it’s going to happen and that’s the thing with boxing, you never know what can happen.”
Tszyu certainly didn’t know what happened, at a loss to explain the fight when speaking to reporters on Sunday after the loss.
Asked to describe how he was feeling, Tszyu replied: “What the f*** just happened?
“What did I get hit with. I have to regroup and …. I dunno, man.
“S*** doesn’t go your way and you have to bounce back. I was positive after Fundora. But I’ve got to find some answers after this. It didn’t go to script.
“I felt unbelievable. He got me. He was the better man on the night. We live and we learn.”
