Difficult to say really, Tim mainly does conditioning at Tiger Muay Thai so Kostya will only be imparting one or 2 tricks at best and won't be involved in game plans etc unless he also heads over to Vegas or whatever. As for who wins, I think it's a 50-50 type of thing right now.
Having looked at the footage in more detail you can see Kostya is teaching Tim a few drills and in the pocket combos/moves based on 3/4 punch combos with integrated defense. It's definitely an area he needs to work on....letting the hands go a bit more in range rather than purely sharpshooting with one or 2 punches at a time. Apparently Tim has amazing conditioning so a bit higher workrate and more fluid combos will help him.
Tim's crew rolling the risky dice and not getting the Fundora fight stopped is looking like a worse decision every day. Not only does he have an L, he missed out on the Spence fight and now Ortiz is off.
Most trainers would have stopped the fundora fight to get the technical decision or draw, but they weren't truly looking out for the kid. Even if he demanded to continue sometimes the team must save the fighter from himself similar to when a guy is taking a beatdown but wants to go on
Yeah Tszyu's team (which is broadly Kostya's old team not including Johnny Lewis, plus Tim's extended family) rolled the dice when they decided to take the fight with Fundora in the first place. In retrospect it was foolish from a career perspective, but they wanted that story, a David and Goliath victory. The whole team fell in behind that narrative and weren't gonna stop. Then they all went in double or nothing trying to fight through the cut for an even more exciting fairytale victory, instead of quitting to fight another day with your WBO belt and your upcoming superfight schedule intact. TLDR - the kid and his whole Ruski team throught they could pull it off and came up short. Good try though, good try indeed.
I suspect they took the Fundora fight because they figured that with Fundora being a southpaw it was good practice for Spence.
Yeah maybe. I suspect that after all the Charlo delays etc Tim was overly eager to hit the big time in his coming out party headlining a Vegas PPV and his team was caught up in the momentum and the emotion of it too much to realise the spiralling risk to his career. No fucking way would Johnny Lewis have let that happen, he'd have been screaming at the ref that Tim couldn't see and get it stopped.
I personally thought Tszy vs. Fundora could've gone either way and that Tszyu would have a good chance in a rematch, without the cut.
I truly believe the cut changed the fight. Tszyu was on his way to a stoppage win at some point in that fight.
Is that really in dispute? Fundora won a narrow decision vs a foreigner with one of the most influential figures in the sport representing him in usa Maybe dudes reach is slipping away but he's still up there
A solid "maybe". Tszyu looked good early. I think he's a bit limited in his combinations, quite conservative with his energy, but he's always been a sharpshooter not a volume guy. Let's not forget though that Fundora adjusted too - he got his nose busted early and started to use his height and feet to good effect on the back foot.
Bohachuk isn’t a pushover. He’s relentless and comes to fight. Could give Ortiz a good scrap. I’m excited to see Ortiz against this guy.
Nice replacement for Tszyu. Definitely the best guy Vergil has faced. I would expect Ortiz to win though.