Sergio Mora was in awe of IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev last weekend, saying he reminded him of the great Alexis Arguello with the way he looked to destroy former WBO champion Tim Tszyu in three rounds at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida.
Murtazaliev’s accurate punches
Commentator Mora says he realized in the first minute and twenty seconds of the fight that Tszyu was in trouble because Murtazaliev looked Arguello-esque, throwing short punches with precision. Tszyu made things easier for Murtazaliev by going right at him and trying to have a war, but he was destroyed.
Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) came into the fight with a broken knuckle on his right hand, which is normally the main weapon in his arsenal. He adjusted well to the injury, using his left hook to repeatedly drop Tszyu (24-2, 17 KOs) to the canvas in a four-knockdown performance.
Mora feels it was poor matchmaking by Tszyu’s team to choose to face the powerful Murtazaliev in his first fight after suffering his first career loss against the 6’6″ Sebastian Fundora on March 30 . He feels Tszyu should have been given a confidence boost instead.
“In the first minute of the first round, I realized that this man is going to give Tim Tszyu problems,” said Sergio Mora on the Chris Mannix YouTube. channell, talking about Bakhram Murtazaliev’s destruction of Tim Tszyu last weekend.
“It only took me a minute and twenty seconds to realize that this guy was going to be a headache. He had a right hand, like a laser, the uppercut, and the hook, which ended up taking him out. M’ he remembered in the first minute when he missed that right hand, and he threw a left hook like an Alexis Arguello.”
Murtazaliev didn’t use his right hand much in the fight. Most of the big punches he landed were with his left hook, and it was almost like he was fighting with only one arm.
“I’m laser-like, I don’t waste space, and the technique is perfect. It’s not the speed that takes you; it’s not the power that takes you. It’s the time and the precision. That’s what I saw with Murtazaliev when ‘he missed the first right hand, and then he threw that left hook and took that right uppercut,’ Mora said.
It was surprising to see how well Murtazaliev fought in tight quarters because taller fighters usually need a lot of space to generate power on their punches. That was not the case with Murtazaliev. It seemed to punch harder from the inside than from the outside, and this was strange but devastating.
“I said, ‘This guy is going to be in trouble.’ Even if he didn’t land clean, it was going to be a long night for Tim Tszyu. It ended up being a short night because it ended up being a three-round war that he was in the end, but a bad matchmaking because he goes from a 6’6” lefty to an unknown, strong, undefeated Russian title holder. “said Mora.
Tszyu looked like he hadn’t done any research on Murtazaliev’s past fights to know what he was getting into fighting this guy. If he had looked at his recent win over Jack Culcay, he would have dismissed him as an opponent.
