Two days before his rematch with Sebastian Fundora, Tim Tszyu spoke about the lengths he would go to win.

“When I come into the ring, I come in with the mentality I’m going to die in the ring,” Tszyu said.

“Sometimes that’s a problem, sometimes for my corner to say ‘stop the fight’, that was never part of what I’m about.

“I’m just about getting in there and finishing to the very end. If it means you’re going to get knocked out, it means you’re going to get knocked out. You try to get back up, get back up, get back up.

“For me, if my corner stopped [the first Fundora fight], I would have had the shits with them, I would have had the shits with life. The fact that I could have lived my life without knowing my full potential. So that answers the question of why the corner didn’t stop it.”

In the rematch with Fundora, according to one version of events pedalled in the aftermath, Tszyu’s corner stopped the fight.

The decision left Tszyu, moments after landing his most telling blows in the seventh round, done on his stool. In a world title fight. Just days after declaring he was willing to die in the ring. Didn’t those comments age badly?

We will never know if Tszyu, had he continued, was capable of finding something within himself to change the result of the fight. Was there something stirring in his soul, perhaps a right hand like the one father Kostya produced to famously floor Zab Judah in the very same arena, that would cement........

© Brisbane Times