Quote Originally Posted by THE THIRD MAN View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Mars_ax View Post
I'm not an aussie, but I thought Kostya had a hall of fame career, tarnished a bit by his loss to Ricky Hatton in his last fight as a pro.

I'm hope Tszyu is doing well financially and otherwise, and congrats on being inducted into the boxing hall of fame!
Unlike Jones Jr and Mosley Tszyu did the right thing and retired, he fought a young gun in Hatton on his home turf, with just 3 rounds in the ring in 36 months, an english ref and 20,000 Hatton fans cheering on every low blow that was landed..so the noise was deafening. Tszyu was approaching 36 yrs old, coming back after a shoulder injury and was quite simply done. More than half his pro fight career was against 16 World Champions. The Phillips loss being the only real blemish and that was due to a gastro attack that left him drained before fight time after the weigh in. Remember he almost had Phillips out of there in round 3, he had nothing left in the tank after round 5, a rematch would have seen a very early KO win. The only reason a rematch didn't happen was Millet stopped Phillips in 1999 and Tszyu went onto to fight Gonzalez. The amazing thing is, i don't think we ever really saw the best of Kostya Tszyu, we saw glimpses of it, but without a Mosley, DLH or Floyd fight i think he will always have a question mark against in his name and that's a shame. He was an undisputed world champion in his time and that is a rarity in boxing.
Kostya Tszyu didn't look like he had any problems during the Vince Phillips fight, he just fought a guy who was hungry and didn't give him space. As it's been said many times Kostya Tszyu likes distance, his inside fighting skills aren't great which is why he was beaten by both Hatton, Phillips.