Nikita Tszyu’s manager Glen Jennings lifted the lid on the conversation that sparked the overhaul of his fighting style and warned it’s only the “first step” as Tszyu improves with every fight.
Tszyu (4-0, 3KO) promised a more tactical approach in his fight against Darkon Dryden (4-1, 4KO) than what we’d previously seen from him and it was a promise he delivered on, dismantling Dryden over the course of three rounds at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre.
The 24-year-old’s early fights had been characterised by blistering knockouts that left opponents seeing stars, but in his third professional outing against Ben Horn, he failed to deliver the final blow many had almost come to expect as the fight went the distance.
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In the post-fight press conference, Jennings noted Tszyu himself knew he had become guilty of chasing the highlight reel finishes and had perhaps ignored the brilliant array of skills in his arsenal that made him an amateur star.
But it was a full team chat after the Horn fight that perhaps gave Tszyu the boxing epiphany he needed as he becomes more at home with every passing second in the ring.
“I think what we take out of tonight is for Nikita, you’ve seen tonight something he may have forgotten in the first three fights as a pro,” Jennings said.
“There’s a skill-set buried there. And he’s been honest, he was starting to follow the line that it was all about a knockout.
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“All we did after the last fight was sit down very calmly and say, ‘You’ve got all the natural ability in the world and for some reason it’s tucked away.’ So we said, ‘Let’s bring that out.’
“Igor (Goloubev, Tszyu’s coach) started working on that, the camp’s been brilliant, his health’s been brilliant, it all fell into place.
“What you’ve seen tonight is the first step of Nikita bringing that skill-set out from the amateurs. That was for us as clinical as we could have asked for. Everything that we trained, everything that we talked about, Nikita delivered.”
Tszyu himself felt it was his best performance since his professional debut, but “probably not” his best ever.
“I still find in my amateur days my reflexes were better and my timing was better,” Tszyu said.
“But this is part of a journey. I’m rediscovering myself, rediscovering this hidden part of me.
“Every step is a journey, every step is an improvement. Today was a big improvement and I want to keep having that trajectory.”
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Tszyu will also be hoping his forward momentum does not involve as many sleepless nights as the ones he had in the lead up to his fight against Dryden.
But he believes the lack of shut-eye can be put down to “an insane level of focus” that meant he simply could not think about anything else than the fight.
“I’d try to go to sleep at 9 o’clock, end up falling asleep at 2 o’clock in the morning and get maybe three or four hours of sleep a night,” Tszyu said.
“That was for the last three weeks. It was mostly based on the pressure that was coming with the sport, a bit of the fear of him knocking me out because I know that he’s got power to his punches and me sometimes being able to slip up and be a little bit sloppy in sparring, I can sometimes cop a shot.
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“That was always running through the back of my head. I’m an over-thinker and I think it comes to a positive attribute at times because it puts me into an insane level of focus and this is what happened for this fight.
“As I was saying, it was the most focused I’ve ever been for any kind of task I’ve ever endured.”
So, what’s next for Tszyu?
No opponent is in the pipeline, at least as of now.
But Jennings expects the 24-year-old to be “back in the ring before Christmas”.
Who knows how many hours of shut-eye he’ll have before then, but if he continues to dismantle opponents like he did to Dryden, his rivals will quickly become the ones having sleepless nights about Tszyu.
