WINNER TAKES ALL
Tszyu was too smart and strong for Sharmba Mitchell in their 2001 unification bout.
In the main support bout, Judah blasted out his IBF mandatory, Allan Vester, in three. The outgunned Dane hit the deck three times. Comparisons were inevitable. Judah looked quick, slick and powerful in his abbreviated bout. Tszyu appeared to labor at times against the largely unknown Urkal. During the Showtime broadcast, color analyst Bobby Czyz wondered aloud if Tszyu had gotten old overnight. In the post-fight interview, Showtime’s Jim Gray asked Tszyu whether he feared Judah’s power after watching him demolish Vester. Tszyu had barely begun to refute the assertion when Gray interrupted. “Don’t be rude to me, please. Let me answer,” said Tszyu. “No boxer will ever fear anybody. And when it happens in the ring, we’re two fighters, two warriors.” Judah, who was in the ring at the same time, agreed. “I feel very confident about this fight,”
he said. “Not depending on Tszyu’s performance tonight, but because he did what he had to do to win. “As for him being scared of me, I don’t want no fighter to be scared of me, because that would make the fight real, real wack. People would be booing and stuff. If you’ve got two conditioned, great athletes, it’s gonna make a helluva fight. “And Kostya Tszyu is a warrior and Zab Judah is a warrior, so you’ve got a thunderbolt going on.” Winner takes all. No excuses. The path to undisputed was cleared. “You know, it’s impossible to distract me,” Tszyu told The Ring. “I did my job. I won the fight. Of course, it’s probably a better preparation for me for the big one against Zab [than a shorter fight].” Contracts were quickly signed, and the fight was slated for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on November 3, 2001. Judah was the right man at the right time. With a mouth as fast as his hands, gold chains almost as thick as his wrists,
and an ever-growing entourage, the 24-year-old was a boxer for the hip-hop generation. Showtime was all in on their rising star. Ahead of the fight, Sports Illustrated published an 11-page profile on Judah. The story by Gary Smith was titled “The Chosen One.” It identified him as a future superstar of sport and chronicled his background as a proud product of Brownsville, the same section of Brooklyn that birthed undisputed heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe. The contents page of the magazine boasted: “If you’ve not heard of Zab Judah, who is fighting to unify the junior welterweight title, then you don’t know the sport’s strangest saga.” The vast majority of the media was firmly in Judah’s corner. One of the brash New Yorker’s loudest cheerleaders was a young and exuberant Max Kellerman. Never one to shy away from hyperbole, Kellerman, writing for ESPN, labeled Tszyu as “overrated” and “Judah-fodder.” It was easy to see why: the dazzling hand speed, the quicker feet, the explosive power. Then there was the slick southpaw movement. The angles. The youth. Everything pointed to a Judah win. There were no two ways about it. Judah was the heir apparent in the 140-pound division. But there were some outliers. Legendary trainer Angelo Dundee tipped Tszyu by knockout. Top three pound-for-pound boxer Roy Jones Jr. saw it the same. Another who bucked the trend was Showtime analyst Czyz. “Zab Judah was a terrific boxer,” Czyz told The Ring. “He had the moves. He had good power, too, and he could hit with both hands. “But here’s the thing: The average person has never fought one minute of one round. They don’t know what
“That’s why we call this fight destiny,” he said. “I thought in the beginning that it was my destiny [to become undisputed], and it became my destiny. Many people, millions of people, watched that fight and remember.” The doorway to undisputed had opened in Phoenix a year earlier when Tszyu belted, battered and bruised an aging Julio Cesar Chavez into submission over six one-sided rounds. The heartbreaking beating was, sadly, a mandatory defense of the WBC belt Tszyu had earned by stopping the formidable Miguel Angel Gonzalez in 1999. A three-man tourney came together very quickly after that. The WBO belt was still not widely accepted in the U.S. at the time, but the other three sanctioning bodies’ champions were ready to throw down. WBA titlist Sharmba Mitchell wanted ultimate glory. IBF strapholder Judah believed he would
become king of kings. Tszyu thought it was inevitable he would triumph. It was the perfect storm. And broadcaster Showtime saw dollar signs. “I won the WBC title first, and then we made the decision to start thinking about unified,” said Tszyu. “Sharmba Mitchell agreed. We did it.” Mitchell boxed well early in their bout at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on February 3, 2001. The southpaw stylist from Washington, D.C., utilized his quick feet and lateral movement to prevent Tszyu from finding a home for his vaunted right hand. But as each round progressed, the momentum incrementally changed. The fight ended in a seventh-round stoppage after Mitchell blew out his knee. Tszyu, who exploited the American’s bum joint by ragdolling him around the ring, was comfortably ahead on two of the official judges’ scorecards and tied on the third when
the fight was called. “A fight is a fight,” Tszyu said. “My strategy was to make him tired, put pressure on him, and that’s what I did. What happened with the knee, it just happened.” Still, that didn’t stop certain sections of the media from buying into the storyline that Tszyu only won because he had a one-legged boxer in front of him. The commentary did little to bother Tszyu. He had other goals in front of him. “I don’t care,” Tszyu said of the naysayers. “Honestly, I do not care.” Almost five months after the Mitchell victory, Tszyu returned to the ring at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, to face his WBC mandatory, Oktay Urkal. The super-durable German showed stern resistance to last the 12-round distance, boxing almost half of the fight with a broken jaw.
It was all smiles from Tszyu during the buildup … and then the bell rang.
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