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.
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’t 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 “second act” to his pro career?
Spence vs Tszyu: Recent Form
by Scott Christ
Errol Spence Jr (28-1, 22 KO) doesn’t have any “recent form.” He hasn’t 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’s important. Errol Spence not fighting for three years tells you that either he couldn’t or didn’t want to fight. Neither option is very promising. Now he’s 36 years old, he signed to do this at 158 lbs, couldn’t make that weight, had it adjusted to 160, and we’re talking about a guy who’s 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.
Tim Tszyu (27-3, 18 KO) has been active, but he’s definitely in the back end of his relevance as a top 10-ish guy at 154 or 160, 31 isn’t 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’s had. He’s also been fun to watch over his career and easy to book, doesn’t shy away from fights either in the ring or at the negotiation table.
Tszyu’s won two straight, but they’ve been against Anthony Velazquez and Denis Nurja, who had undefeated records of a particular sort, the sort that gets you a fight where you’re meant to prove someone who’s been taking some L’s is “back!” for promotional purposes. Those guys did their jobs, losing a pair of shutout, 10-round decisions in New South Wales.
Every single one of Tim Tszyu’s three losses have come in the time that Spence has been on the sidelines. He’s 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’s an active fighter. Spence isn’t.
My basic point is we’re flying blind with Errol Spence here. Nobody except for him and the people in his training camp know what he does or doesn’t have in the tank right now, and I’m not going to spend too much time slow-motion examining training camp clips from the internet and assuming they’re showing their hand with those. I mean, if I were his team and he did look decent behind closed doors, I’d put up only clips where he doesn’t look good. I learned these tactics from George Kambosos Jr, who wrote The Art of War. Psyche your mind!
Spence vs Tszyu: Style Matchup
by Patrick Stumberg
I can’t tell you how much I loathe the “who wants it more” cliche. It’s empty, reductive babble that trivializes the fighters’ 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.
Unfortunately for me and my recreational loathing of inconsequential pablum, it might be true here. Will looks like the deciding factor.
In a vacuum, this is Spence’s fight to lose. He excels in the sort of close-quarters slugfests that remain Tszyu’s bread and butter despite the latter’s recent defeats, and Tszyu’s get-well wins over limited opposition didn’t demonstrate the sort of defensive adjustments he’d need to recapture his former glory.
We’re not in a vacuum, and neither are we in 2022. Spence has baggage that I can’t bring myself to overlook; he’s 36, hasn’t fought in three years, got absolutely mollywhopped the last time he laced up the gloves, and demanded an eleventh-hour weight change because “11 pounds heavier than usual” proved an insurmountable burden. These aren’t the kinds of things you want weighing you down in what’s almost certainly going to be a war of attrition.
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’s got heart for days. I’m 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’ll take the one who went 12 against Sebastian Fundora with half his face hanging off.
Spence could hypothetically avoid this situation by leaning on his superior technique and play matador; he’s got a great jab and height and reach advantages. Thing is, he’s also got a mile-long mean streak and aging legs; he’ll inevitably end up having to knuckle down, and that way lies ruin.
Spence vs Tszyu Predictions: Who will win?
Scott Christ: When this fight was rumored and then made official, I expressed the thought that Tim Tszyu is a great “comeback” opponent for Errol Spence, entirely because it’s not just a gimme, or at least it may not be. That’s valuable because — from a purely sporting perspective and not me worrying about his bank account — Errol Spence, at 36 following a three-year layoff, needs to find out quickly if he should be boxing or not.
However the result goes, I doubt Errol Spence is going to be an elite fighter ever again. But we’ll 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’d fought Joey Spencer in Dallas.
Then comes the other hand, where I think about Errol and where he’s really at mentally going into this. We can’t know, of course, but I can’t help but wonder if some part of Spence does expect this to be easy, and if he’s not fooling himself into thinking he’s who he was seven years ago. The best Errol Spence would have smoked the best Tim Tszyu. We’re not dealing with either of those guys on Saturday. We’ve 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.
So I’m taking a wild guess here. If it were a 10-round fight, I think I’d 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’m about 51-49 in my own head on this, but I’m going with Tszyu. Tim Tszyu by TKO in Round 11
Patrick Stumberg: It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can’t 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’t ignore my (ultimately vindicated) misgivings.
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’s cracks and break him down the stretch. Tim Tszyu by TKO in Round 10
