The trainer of former WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu 24-1 (17) has hit back at critics who have said the corner mismanaged a nasty cut to the scalp during the 29-year-old Australian’s world title loss to Sebastian Fundora 21-1-1 (13) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.
Tszyu was cut be an errant elbow from six-foot-six southpaw Fundora in the second round and spent the last 10 rounds of the bout struggling to see with his face a mask of blood.
The wound continued to bleed throughout the bout. When the final bell sounded, the 26-year-old Fundora of Coachella, California was awarded the WBO strap and the vacant WBC belt by split decision with scores of 116-112, 115-113 and 112-116.
Tszyu’s uncle and long-time trainer Igor Goloubev defended his team, including cutman Mark Gambin, saying the doctor should’ve stopped the fight.
“These people just want positions, everyone will say they could do it better but they weren’t there,” Goloubev told Fox Sports Australia.
“If you are not there you can’t know. We’ve never seen a cut like this, the blood was flowing like it was coming from a pipe. You need to stitch it up and put tape to stop the blood, you can’t make the bleeding just stop.
“I was sure the doctor was going to stop it. The fight should have been stopped after round four.
“But he let the fight keep going, Tim was wiping the blood away, he can barely see anything and they kept the fight going, so I thought, okay we have a job to do.
“When I walked into the ring after the fight, I thought we won. Fundora landed a lot of jabs but Tim hit him with the harder shots.”
There has been no shortage of critics offering their take on how the corner should’ve handled the issue, with American trainer Robert Garcia the latest to chime in with his two cents.
“Right away, second round, I would have stopped it,” Garcia said to ESNews. “My fighter can’t continue with all that blood coming out. All that blood coming out to weaken the fighter.
“The ref and the doctor, they don’t know. So they have to go by what the fighter says. They have to protect the fighter. So they would stop it and that would make it a no contest.
“Who cares if 10,000 people are going to be mad? They already had a good performance from [Isaac] Pitbull [Cruz against Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero], so they were happy already.
“Tim Tszyu still would have been a champion right now. If it happens before the fourth round and it’s that bad, you don’t need a cutman. Stop the fight. It was a cut that they couldn’t stop.
“It wasn’t that they had a bad cutman. They didn’t need a cutman. It happened before the fourth round. Stop the fight and he’d be home as the champion. Now he lost and now he has to start all over. Now his pay is probably going to drop.
“The corner should have done it because the fighters want to fight.”
Fundora’s team have expressed interest in rematch but Tszyu won’t be picking up a pay cheque any time soon as he will require time on the sidelines to recover from his injury.
Goloubev says we may not see Tszyu back in the ring until the very end of the year.
“Six to nine months, I’d say,” Goloubev said. “We won’t do any sparring until we have a fight locked in, I work backwards from that date.”
