LIVE: Rival’s careless whisper fires up Tszyu

At yesterday’s weigh-in, Steve Spark leaned over and shared a quiet word with Tim Tszyu.

The Queensland fighter, who goes into the fight as a huge underdog at $9.50, was gifted the biggest opportunity of his boxing career just seven days ago and his sense of appreciation dominated the headlines since he was announced as Michael Zerafa’s replacement for the bout in Newcastle.

But Spark’s competitive spirit kicked in a day out from the fight as the Toowoomba based boxer looked to unsettle his much fancied opponent.

After the obligatory face-off, Spark whispered: “I’m going to end you.”

Asked what he said back to Spark, Tszyu said: “I was just letting him know the dream ends tomorrow. It’s back to reality.”

Tszyu goes into the fight a raging $1.04 favourite. Some have questioned whether a fight against Spark will give him what he needs to challenge for a world title in the near future.

The bout has raised questions over whether Tszyu’s handlers should have agreed to Zerafa’s request to postpone the bout until the latest COVID outbreaks in NSW were brought under control.

However, there were concerns that pushing the bout back would impact Tszyu’s chances of being the man next in line to take on the winner of the Jermell Charlo-Brian Castano title unification bout on July 17.

“The decision keeps Tim in line for a world title,” said Tszyu’s promoter Matt Rose of No Limit.

“We needed to go before Charlo-Castano to stay on track for that shot. People say we should have waited two or three weeks for Zerafa, but it’s not that simple when you’re in the middle of a pandemic.

“We are on a very tight timeframe where we could do ourselves out of a world title shot by not taking a fight now.”Tim hasn’t worked this hard, and we haven’t worked this hard, to put Tim into the No.1 contender position to then miss out.”