By Tom Donelson / Member Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) … Contributor to www.dmboxing.com since 2008
At the age of 22 and son of a boxing legend, Tim Tszyu was fighting veteran and former champion Tony Harrison for the WBO interim Junior Middleweight championship. Tony Harrison flew down to Australia to fight for one more shot at the title.
The opening round belonged to Harrison as he dominated the round with just his jab as he connected on 12 jabs but from this point, it was all Tim Tszyu. In the second round, Tszyu connected with the right hand and uppercuts while Harrison landed his own right hand, but the harder punches were delivered by Tszyu. The third round was Tszyu as he landed 14 punches with 11 power punches. Harrison still had an effective jab, but Tszyu walked him down and forced him on the rope where he landed a big right that stunned Harrison.
Harrison jabs no longer had much impact on Tszyu but like in the previous two rounds, Tszyu punches were the most impactful and after first four rounds, I had the bout 39-37.
In the fifth and sixth round saw Tszyu continue to pressure Harrison and force him to the ropes. Tszyu landing powder shots whereas Harrison continued to jab but not much else. The seventh round saw Harrison landing his own power shots but Tszyu absorbed them while landing his own power shots.
The eighth round began with Tszyu landing power shots that shook Harrison up as Harrison hit the ropes as he was forced to do most of the fight. After the round, I had the fight 79-73 and it wasn’t a hard fight to score.
Harrison needed to change the momentum and show he could hurt Tszyu, but the ninth round saw Tszyu continue to dominate. Tszyu started with a couple of right hands that had Harrison hurt, and Harrison went to the rope. Tszyu landed 25 punches, most power punches. Tszyu landed several upper cuts than sent Harrison down for the eight-count. Harrison got up but referee noted that Harrison wobbled as he tried to walk. The fight was stopped. Tszyu landed 44 punches over the past two rounds combined compared to 13 for Harrison. Harrison only managed to land 2 punches in the decisive ninth round.
Tszyu showed himself worthy of his father’s legacy as he dominated the fight from the second round on. His power was on display and he landed nearly double the punches of Harrison and from the second round, he landed more punches per round with the seventh round was the only close round as Harrison landed 9 punches to Tszyu 10 but Tszyu landed power shots in that round to win.
Harrison landed nearly double the jabs and about 60% of his punches landed were jabs. 80 percent of Tszyu punches were power shots. That was the difference as Tszyu landed impactful punches and Harrison merely jab but landed very few power shots. Tszyu landed three times as many power shots as Harrison. If you don’t land many power shots and your punches do very little damage while you are getting pummeled, you won’t win too many fights.
This was Tszyu coming out party as he served noticed a second Tszyu has arrived, and he is undefeated with a 22-0 record including 16 wins by knockout.
Tim really showed his ability here. The only father-son team as equal in skills was Guty Espadas Sr and Jr in my opinion