Standing 6’5½” with praying mantis-like poking from the southpaw stance, Sebastian Fundora is as unique and intricate a puzzle as you’ll ever find in the junior middleweight division.
And Tim Tszyu knows it heading into his fight with "The Towering Inferno" on Saturday night in Las Vegas, where Tszyu’s WBO 154-pound world championship and the vacant WBC title will be on the line.
“I think his awkwardness, of course, his height … just the way he is, his natural God-given gifts, of course they present a tremendous task,” Tszyu tells DAZN over a recent Zoom session. “I don’t think there is anyone like this at 154, this tall.”
But the more he thinks about it, the more Tszyu believes that Fundora presents him with an optimal platform to showcase his own fan-please fighting style.
“I feel like this is a picture-perfect, type fight,” Tszyu says confidently. “Picture-perfect.
“He’s got a lot of strengths, I’ll say that, but there is also a lot of weaknesses that you can exploit.”
Brian Mendoza knows about the latter as he uncorked a riveting left hook to buckle Fundora’s knees before piecing together a right-left hook combo to score a seventh-round knockout in their April 2023 fight.
“I think Mendoza exploited it to the maximum with an exclamation mark,” says Tszyu, who later defeated Mendoza by unanimous decision in October.
Tszyu's looking forward to doing the same — tenfold.
Intensifying the matter is the buzz about Terence Crawford potentially challenging the winner of Tszyu-Fundora. Tszyu told DAZN clashing with the former undisputed world champ at junior welterweight and welterweight would be the “biggest fight to be made at this moment of time.”
All of this has Tszyu wired for Saturday night.
“I’m like a pitbull that’s ready to unleash,” he warns. “Right now, I’m on the harness, but fight night comes, it’s unleashing.”
Live on DAZN: Haney vs. Garcia on April 20. Click here for details.