I'm not sure if this is a step up or laterally from Tszyu's recent competition (Horn & Hogan foremost among them) but it would make for another respectable feather in his cap and defeating Zerafa, rated #6 at middleweight by the WBA, ought to help nose Tszyu crack into that organization's rankings at 154lbs (he is already ranked top 5 by the rest: #1 by the WBO and #3 by the IBF and WBC)...especially with their vacant Oceanian belt on the line. As for Zerafa, springing this upset would cap off a hell of a 2 year sprint - as he would have basically run table on the three biggest domestic draws on the current Aussie scene (Horn I, Mundine, and potentially Tszyu).
Don't think The Tool Train needs to fight abroad in the current climate. We're allowed to have some decent boxing here, you know. Timmy did win a couple of football stadium fights last year so why would you send him elsewhere? The Train of Pain has been delivering it for a while. I think he kayos Micky Zee & in doing so cleans out all the best fighters from his own weight division in this country. He does need to start facing recognizable international opponents thereafter though. PBC has a long list of Junior Middles looking for fights & paydays. They should begin sending a few of them to Australia to get both. Jarrett Hurd & Banana Split are a couple of likely types. Anyone decent who's not heading in Junior Charlo's direction should consider coming down here for a good whooping.
I like how Ozzie fighters don't wait around and let fights "marinate". If theres a big all Australia fight, it gets made and pretty quickly. Theres never an Australian version of Witter-Hattion or Brook-Khan.
True but it almost errs too far in the other direction. Aussie "super fights" are dime a dozen, and even the biggest of them is usually hardly much to hoot about in the grand international scheme, and so having the waters diluted by staging them so frequently at such middling quality has cheapened the concept of a 'major' domestic event in Oz. Case in point: half of the last umpteen top-dollar PPV shows down under have been headliner by Choc Mundine, who really hasn't been a blip on the radar of relevance up in the real world since he got spanked by Kessler (or, going further, sparked by Ottke now two decades hence...or, honestly, ever, in truth...) And that is said with all due respect and somebody that likes a lot of Australian boxers. Tis just the harsh truth, however. They don't let things marinate overlong but fry them up to immediate order like corn dogs, furthering the circus atmosphere of the sport on that continent. (farces like Green vs. Briggs sticking out most in the minds of neighbors around the globe, so that occasional diamond in the rough matches that deserve to be hyped fall prey to Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome).
Agree with most of your post, I was a huge Kessler fan and didn't like Mundine but respected his talent. I contest that Kessler spanked Mundine, it was one of Mundines better performances. Yes Kessler was the rightful winner but you could see from his reaction when the cards were read that it was hardly 'a walk in the park'. Actually if anything, Mundine respected Kessler too much that night. My take on Mundine, obviously not a great chin, to put it mildly but for a short period of time, he was arguably the most talented super middle in boxing. Big emphasis on 'short'! The biggest domestic farce I can remember would have to have been Mundine v Ellis.
Strange. Zerafa withdrew - no injury, no excuse given, just...didn't want it anymore? Subbing in on a week's notice is 12-1 (11), 24yo Towoomba man Steve Sparks.
No mate, battered sav isn't on a stick, like a corn dog. Once you insert the stick into a battered sav it becomes a 'dagwood dog' .