Errol Spence Jr will return to boxing for his first fight in three years this weekend, when he travels to Australia to face Tim Tszyu in a 12-round, middleweight main event.<\/p>\n
Spence has been out of action so long that the guy he faced last has since won world titles in two other weight classes and retired. Do we have any idea what Spence does or doesn\u2019t have in the tank at this point? Is Errol making a mistake coming back against someone as aggressive as Tszyu, or even making a mistake coming back at all? Or can the former welterweight titleholder kick off a strong \u201csecond act\u201d to his pro career?<\/p>\n
Spence vs Tszyu: Recent Form<\/p>\n
Errol Spence Jr (28-1, 22 KO) doesn\u2019t have any \u201crecent form.\u201d He hasn\u2019t fought in three years. The last time we saw him, he got annihilated by Bud Crawford. Our own John Hansen said something like this a while back, and I tend to agree and think it\u2019s important. Errol Spence not fighting for three years tells you that either he couldn\u2019t or didn\u2019t want to fight. Neither option is very promising. Now he\u2019s 36 years old, he signed to do this at 158 lbs, couldn\u2019t make that weight, had it adjusted to 160, and we\u2019re talking about a guy who\u2019s never fought north of 147 as a pro, save for some early-career 150 lb contract weights, a normal thing, and a one-off in 2015 with Chris van Heerden where he weighed in a bit over 156.<\/p>\n
Tim Tszyu (27-3, 18 KO) has been active, but he\u2019s definitely in the back end of his relevance as a top 10-ish guy at 154 or 160, 31 isn\u2019t old but Tim has taken some shots over the years. His mindset and approach to boxing was always likely to lead to a short prime, when combined with the fact that he had good but not great ability. Good will get you some world titles, especially if you have a good last name and\/or the right promotional and management teams, which he\u2019s had. He\u2019s also been fun to watch over his career and easy to book, doesn\u2019t shy away from fights either in the ring or at the negotiation table.<\/p>\n
Tszyu\u2019s won two straight, but they\u2019ve been against Anthony Velazquez and Denis Nurja, who had undefeated records of a particular sort, the sort that gets you a fight where you\u2019re meant to prove someone who\u2019s been taking some L\u2019s is \u201cback!\u201d for promotional purposes. Those guys did their jobs, losing a pair of shutout, 10-round decisions in New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Every single one of Tim Tszyu\u2019s three losses have come in the time that Spence has been on the sidelines. He\u2019s had seven fights since we last saw Spence. On the one hand, maybe this is good for Spence. If Spence is refreshed and the time off has been a positive overall, then yeah, that can be good. If not, I mean, as many flaws as Tszyu has, he\u2019s an active fighter. Spence isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
My basic point is we\u2019re flying blind with Errol Spence here. Nobody except for him and the people in his training camp know what he does or doesn\u2019t have in the tank right now, and I\u2019m not going to spend too much time slow-motion examining training camp clips from the internet and assuming they\u2019re showing their hand with those. I mean, if I were his team and he did look decent behind closed doors, I\u2019d put up only clips where he doesn\u2019t look good. I learned these tactics from George Kambosos Jr, who wrote The Art of War. Psyche your mind!<\/p>\n
Spence vs Tszyu: Style Matchup<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t tell you how much I loathe the \u201cwho wants it more\u201d cliche. It\u2019s empty, reductive babble that trivializes the fighters\u2019 technique and preparation, a way to fill air when you lack the knowledge to make a meaningful assessment of the action in front of you.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for me and my recreational loathing of inconsequential pablum, it might be true here. Will looks like the deciding factor.<\/p>\n
In a vacuum, this is Spence\u2019s fight to lose. He excels in the sort of close-quarters slugfests that remain Tszyu\u2019s bread and butter despite the latter\u2019s recent defeats, and Tszyu\u2019s get-well wins over limited opposition didn\u2019t demonstrate the sort of defensive adjustments he\u2019d need to recapture his former glory.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not in a vacuum, and neither are we in 2022. Spence has baggage that I can\u2019t bring myself to overlook; he\u2019s 36, hasn\u2019t fought in three years, got absolutely mollywhopped the last time he laced up the gloves, and demanded an eleventh-hour weight change because \u201c11 pounds heavier than usual\u201d proved an insurmountable burden. These aren\u2019t the kinds of things you want weighing you down in what\u2019s almost certainly going to be a war of attrition.<\/p>\n
Tszyu is a flawed product, just slightly too fragile and lacking in one-shot power for his plodding pressure style to carry him past elite competition, but he\u2019s got heart for days. I\u2019m not convinced Spence can sit him down for good, and if it comes down to who can take more punishment in the pocket without wilting, I\u2019ll take the one who went 12 against Sebastian Fundora with half his face hanging off.<\/p>\n
Spence could hypothetically avoid this situation by leaning on his superior technique and play matador; he\u2019s got a great jab and height and reach advantages. Thing is, he\u2019s also got a mile-long mean streak and aging legs; he\u2019ll inevitably end up having to knuckle down, and that way lies ruin.<\/p>\n
Spence vs Tszyu Predictions: Who will win?<\/p>\n
Scott Christ: When this fight was rumored and then made official, I expressed the thought that Tim Tszyu is a great \u201ccomeback\u201d opponent for Errol Spence, entirely because it\u2019s not just a gimme, or at least it may not be. That\u2019s valuable because \u2014 from a purely sporting perspective and not me worrying about his bank account \u2014 Errol Spence, at 36 following a three-year layoff, needs to find out quickly if he should be boxing or not.<\/p>\n
However the result goes, I doubt Errol Spence is going to be an elite fighter ever again. But we\u2019ll find out what Errol has. On one hand, I admire his choice to take a fight with Tszyu, and on the road, at that. It will say something more than if he\u2019d fought Joey Spencer in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Then comes the other hand, where I think about Errol and where he\u2019s really at mentally going into this. We can\u2019t know, of course, but I can\u2019t help but wonder if some part of Spence does expect this to be easy, and if he\u2019s not fooling himself into thinking he\u2019s who he was seven years ago. The best Errol Spence would have smoked the best Tim Tszyu. We\u2019re not dealing with either of those guys on Saturday. We\u2019ve got a long-inactive, highly-questionable, 36-year-old Errol Spence against a 31-year-old Tim Tszyu whose armor has been cracked substantially and is 3-3 in his last six fights.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m taking a wild guess here. If it were a 10-round fight, I think I\u2019d pick Spence, because my thought is he might struggle more as it goes on after a solid start in the first half and maybe through seven or eight rounds. A 12-round distance gives Tszyu that extra time to break Spence down and test his true desire to be in there anymore. Errol has always been a tough dude, he could take some shots in there, but this is a new day. I\u2019m about 51-49 in my own head on this, but I\u2019m going with Tszyu. Tim Tszyu by TKO in Round 11<\/p>\n
Patrick Stumberg: It\u2019s a bit of a stretch, but I can\u2019t help but think of Keith Thurman vs Sebastian Fundora, the aging, inactive marvel of a former generation squaring off with a walking meat grinder. Thurman had the style to win the fight, very nearly prompting me to predict an upset, but I couldn\u2019t ignore my (ultimately vindicated) misgivings.<\/p>\n
Here, again, the red flags are just too prominent. The slow-motion avalanche that is Tim Tszyu will worm its way into all of Spence\u2019s cracks and break him down the stretch. Tim Tszyu by TKO in Round 10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Errol Spence Jr will return to boxing for his first fight in three years this weekend, when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,217149,16145,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-821522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxing-predictions","tag-boxing-commentary-opinion","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}