Boxing loves nothing more than a good narrative. The sport all but cries out for them: Give me your beefs, your drama, your crash landings and comebacks yearning to be spun into Hollywood screenplays. Because the characters are often some of the lowest and the stakes couldn’t be higher, boxing aches to tell tales – to the point that it will sometimes conjure them out of thin air.
It’s hard to know what boxing’s current plans are for Tim Tszyu. Once cast as the gifted, good-guy scion of International Boxing Hall of Fame royalty Kostya Tszyu, he now enters the frame as a down-on-his-luck two-time loser whose entire career may have been forever altered by the sharpened, errant elbow of an opponent most believed to be his inferior.
And that’s what makes the next chapter of Tszyu’s story – a July 19 rematch with that infamous foe, junior middleweight titleholder Sebastian Fundora – so damn interesting.
“This is unfinished business, for sure,” Australia’s Tszyu, 25-2 (18 KOs), said at a Thursday media workout at Split-T Boxing Gym in Las Vegas, not far from where he will take on Fundora at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on a gigantic card headlined by the return of Manny Pacquiao.
“I can’t wait to get in the ring so that I can punish him. I’ve got a lot to prove. I wouldn’t say there’s bad blood, but I wanna take his head off. This is gonna be a fan-friendly fight.”
If it rates anywhere near the level of theater embodied by their first fight, the Fundora-Tszyu rematch could, against all odds, steal the show from Pacquiao, who will return as a 46-year-old after a four-year ring absence and his own induction into the IBHOF to take a swing at welterweight belt holder Mario Barrios and one more title.
The 6-foot-5½ southpaw Fundora, considered as much a curiosity as a contender before replacing the injured Keith Thurman in a challenge of Tszyu’s junior middleweight title (which included the prize of a separate vacant belt) last March, has yet to stamp himself as a respected and worthy recipient of the belts he swiped that night in Las Vegas from under Tszyu’s blood-soaked gaze. (Sorry, we’re going to need more proof than Chordale Booker.)
But Tszyu is leaving nothing to chance this time around – especially after being stopped in his follow-up fight, in an equally stunning outcome, by Bakhram Murtazaliev last October.
“It’s nice to have a proper preparation to focus on Sebastian Fundora, because he’s a different type of boxer with his physical attributes,” Tszyu said.
“I wasn’t able to show myself completely the first time, and now I get to rewrite history.”
Will he? We honestly have no way of knowing, which makes this matchup one of the most anticipated in boxing in 2025. Is Fundora in the process of being overlooked yet again? Is Tszyu actually the unbeaten division-wrecker we saw before Fundora’s unfortunate elbow sliced the Aussie’s scalp to unleash a gusher that hindered his vision and gave Fundora an opening? Or is he objectively the sum of his actions – including continuing on in that fight when he could have bowed out without penalty, as well as his moments of overaggressiveness against both Fundora and Murtazaliev?
“I think the fact that we know each other and have shared the ring with each other will make us even better in the rematch,” Tszyu said of Fundora. “We’ll both make adjustments and we’ll see who makes the correct ones on the night.
“I feel like the knockout is gonna come. I just have to stay patient. About a year ago, I was going too much for it, and you can’t do that in boxing – especially at the top level. When it comes, it comes.”
Strategy aside, Tszyu himself admits that he can’t let his focus stray from the task at hand. Did he indeed sell Fundora short as a replacement opponent in their first battle? Was he hellbent on correcting the ledger against Fundora when he fought Murtazaliev, blinded this time not by blood but a sort of tunnel-visioned hubris?
“I used to envision future fights a little too much,” he said. “This time, it’s 100 percent Fundora-focused.”
Sounds like the perfect script.
“This is a massive card with Manny coming back to do historic things,” Tszyu said. “This card has everything. It’s a real global boxing stage. It’s gonna be a hell of a show. I really think it’s gonna be the card of the year.”
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
