Tszyu’s stunning admission, says Mahoney ‘edged’ thrilling draw<\/a><\/p>\nNikita Tszyu and Ben Mahoney have fought themselves to a standstill in thrilling contest that was scored a split decision draw on the Gold Coast on Wednesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m not a very good judge,” he said of his initial verdict.<\/p>\n
“I scored it 7-3. In a good way, 8-4. I thought I won the majority of the middle rounds. I gave him the first two rounds and the last two rounds, but [I won] everything else in between.<\/p>\n
“I don’t regret it, because it was what I felt at the time.”<\/p>\n
The still-undefeated Sydney slayer hopes his best nights lie ahead of him \u2014 and ideally in the US.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old and his team have always been happy to take things slowly and not rush into taking big fights in the boxing mecca.<\/p>\n
But Tszyu (12-1-0, 10KOs) finally feels ready, despite Tim relinquishing his IBO super-welterweight belt in the US to Sebastian Fundora, as well as losing a rematch and copping a brutal beat down in another world-title loss in America to Bakhram Murtazaliev.<\/p>\n
“I think I can figure it out,” Tszyu told AAP.<\/p>\n
“This fight was a great learning curve for me and it puts things a lot into perspective. I’ve got to be a lot more professional with the way I do things.<\/p>\n
“I can’t be landscaping close to the fight. I can’t be doing woodworking close to the fight. Just some bad habits I do.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I’ve got to be a professional athlete.”<\/p>\n
No Limit Boxing is known to be pushing for Tszyu to feature on the undercard to the David Benavidez-Michal Cieslak unified blockbuster in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 12.<\/p>\n
But if a US date does not eventuate, No Limit has confirmed Tszyu will fight at least once more in 2026 in Australia.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Believing his domestic duties are done, Nikita Tszyu is ready to take on America after changing his tune…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,303711,802,2992,1913,11876,85],"class_list":["post-893814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-mahoney","tag-boxing","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-nikita-tszyu","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}