Cervantes. He might have to endure some rough moments, mind, and lose some exchanges against Tszyu's precision power punching. I just tend to think that he himself was too skilled a counter puncher and too adept at using his height and intelligent little footwork shifts angles on the slow retreat to detonate the kind of hard, accurate straight rights that Kostya was vulnerable to. A crucial edge in a battle of great straight rights, as was his edge in ditching and swaying away from shots. He could be a mean, dirty fucker too, very capable of rough housing, hitting low, using his head and elbows etc when threatened, something that Kostya never looked comfortable against Equally as functionally strong as Tszyu too at that weight,though Tszyu was obviously very strong himself. Cervantes a better infighter though. I'd imagine it'd be a bit back and forth for quite a while with both men being hurt but with Cervantes always having the edge and eventually breaking Tszyu down in the later rounds.
Agreed with every word. Yeah, Cervantes seemed a lot mentally tougher than Tszyu. Also, he'd have a huge edge over Tszyu in height and reach, and his cross is made to land over Tsyzu's hanging left.
Thinking on it, Tszyu was pretty durable tbf, he might well do the rounds, though 15 doesn't bode well him especially. He did absorb a lot of flush punishment against Philips while looking a lot flatter than usual before eventually submitting. The same when way past his best against Hatton. A lot of people sort of characterize the Philips loss as a thrashing but it was a really entertaining back and forth and Philips took a lot of huge right hands but just wouldn't cave and kept coming back with the same shot. Obviously he was miles out of Cervantes's league so I wouldn't take TOO much from it...
