Tszyu-Mitchell: A Preview.

For a fighter generally regarded as a slick, southpaw stylist, Sharmba Mitchell wears a great many battle scars upon his face. Comparatively, the only obvious blemish on Kostya Tszyu’s facial features is the scar on his upper lip, acquired not from the fists of one of his fellow pugilists, but

from a surgeon’s knife in an emergency procedure to alleviate the threat of a deadly infection. On the surface, one medical melodrama has done more to damage Tszyu’s tough Siberian skin than more than twenty years of competitive boxing, including one go-around with Mitchell himself. You have to search back through seven years of boxing history to find Tszyu’s only professional loss, a crushing disappointment played out against the background of his greatest personal defeat, the contractual dispute with former promoter Bill Mordey that ultimately cost Tszyu four million dollars. Tszyu stands as one of the last of a failing generation of champions; will his resilience see him survive where others have failed, or has Mitchell’s time to inflict an indelible mark upon Tszyu and the boxing world finally arrived?

Mitchell’s last chance to redeem himself against Tszyu comes partly because he has fought his way through the correct political avenues in becoming the interim IBF champion to Tszyu’s legitimate title of the same organization, and partly because there is a notion of unfinished business between the two men. Mitchell is debatably second only to Tszyu himself in a light welterweight division possessing an almost obscenely vast and varied array of talent. Despite this, I contend that Tszyu chooses to indulge this rematch with Mitchell because, by his own admission, the spectacle of their first meeting was “unsatisfactory,” and also, simply because he knows deep within himself that he has the beating of the American.

Military personnel debating the logistics of war will say that a primary determining factor to proceed with an attack is simply whether or not the war is winnable. Tszyu’s possession of a shrewd boxing intellect stretches further than the confines of the ring; being beyond the kind of cheap bravado that might prompt such an audacious feat means that Tszyu is meeting Mitchell immediately after a twenty-two month hiatus knowing that whether through brute strength or tactical boxing, he can overcome Mitchell and lay this chapter of his career to rest. Personally, I am inclined to agree.

Despite all Tszyu’s calculation of an opponent’s weaknesses and adaptability in the ring, he possesses something invaluable; something that carries him on if all else fails. He has heart. The negative physical ramifications of this attribute can be severe, like the injuries suffered by Tszyu during his TKO loss to Vince Phillips all those years ago. But that pain, that willingness to sacrifice everything of yourself to win is what separates fighters from athletes, or more specifically, fighters like Kostya Tszyu from fighters like Sharmba Mitchell. Tszyu might wish to keep himself above the taunts Mitchell has previously thrown at him, but I believe there is a personal edge to this fight, a dislike from Tszyu that has also been responsible for Mitchell’s rather fortunate second chance.

It is no secret that the journey is almost over for Tszyu. He has become more injury prone in recent years and doubtlessly, every new training camp represents a greater challenge and an increased physical toll for Tszyu, a thirty-five year old man who has weathered twenty-five years of high-intensity training and the unpredictable demands of professional combat. The pace of Tszyu’s career had already wound down to something of a farewell tour before injury ground it to a virtual halt. Maybe these facts mean that we have been robbed of seeing the very best of Kostya Tszyu, a mature and educated fighting machine just before his physical limits were truncated by age and all its inevitability. Alternatively, maybe his time away made for crucial rejuvenation, and the best is yet to come.

What is certain is that Tszyu has been a fighter much longer than he has had the opportunity to be a father. He has built a life for himself that would have been beyond the reaches of his wildest dreams when his family and all of their worldly possessions filled one tiny room in an apartment shared by another family during his childhood in Russia. The time will come when either he will choose to depart gracefully, or the day will come when he faces a man that will force him through another nightmarish beating that his pride will not allow him to avoid; but that day will not be this Saturday, and that man is not Sharmba Mitchell.

Jim Cawkwell can be reached at jam2lis@sprint.ca