Nikita Tszyu climbs off the canvas to KO arch-rival Dylan Biggs in the toughest fight of his career as the tell-tale weigh-in signal proved crucial to the Australian star’s big win
Nikita Tszyu was forced to take himself off the canvas to eliminate his arch-rival Dylan Biggs in the toughest fight of his career.
The new Australian super welterweight champion joked that he is ready for the bright lights of Las Vegas, while his older brother Tim Tszyu, world champion, is now a star in the United States.
“It’s a beautiful feeling, I’ve been imagining this moment, imagining how it would go,” he told the crowd with the belt around his waist.
Tszyu was knocked down in the first round before scoring a big finish in the fifth, admitting he is a slow starter and needs to take a few hits to get going.
“He was there like a wall for me to climb over,” he said of Biggs, but revealed how he changed his game plan to get the decisive knockout.
‘When my shot started to land. I noticed he was being gassed… trying to hit me with shots from a distance. I had to set traps for him and hit him as he attacked.”
When asked what’s next, he laughed and said, “Vegas, baby!” as he looked at his brother Tim.
“My heart was beating pretty fast,” Tim admitted of how he felt when Nikita was knocked down. He suggested that his younger brother next face Tony Harrison, the man he knocked out in Sydney.
While Biggs looked like the bigger man in the ring, fans couldn’t help but notice a key clue during the pre-fight weigh-in that could have proven crucial to Tszyu’s victory.
The broad-shouldered Biggs’ body frame is much slimmer around the waist, leading the Tszyu camp to believe that targeting the body would be the path to another victory.
The victory extended the 25-year-old Tszyu’s record to 8-0, with six of his victories coming via knockout.
In the co-main event, Issac Hardman restored his reputation as “The headsplitter” with a punishing TKO victory over Troy Coleman to claim the vacant WBO Intercontinental Middleweight title.
After winning his first thirteen professional fights, Hardman had lost two of his last three to Michael Zerafa and Rohan Murdock before getting his revenge.
Coleman was saved by the bell after overcoming a barrage in the fourth round, before the referee wisely stopped the fight early in the fifth round.
Earlier, Brandon “The Bull” Grach delivered the Australian Knockout of the Year by upsetting previously undefeated Liam Talivaa in an explosive heavyweight bout.
Grach, a former teenage amateur prodigy who only returned to the ring in September after a 13-year hiatus from boxing, ended Talivaa’s night just four seconds into the second round with a thunderous left hook.
There were concerns for Talivaa as he lay motionless on the canvas after catching a cold, but he eventually came around.
Talivaa was caught celebrating prematurely with a throat-slitting gesture after dropping Grach in the first round.
But in a major statement to heavyweight top dogs Justis Huni and Joe Goodall, Grach responded almost immediately, sending Talivaa crashing to the ground with a big right late in the opening round, and then again early in the second round.
More to follow.