Big-punching Nikita Tszyu says it's “cool” fighting for regional titles as he prepares to take the next step in his explosive boxing career.
A former national super welterweight champion, Tszyu ( 9-0, 7 KOs) has relinquished that title and will fight fellow New South Welshman Koen Mazoudier for the vacant IBF Australasian and the WBO inter-continental super welterweight titles at ICC Sydney next Tuesday.
A regional title usually secures a top-15 world ranking.
“Actually I didn’t know about the regional titles until I saw it on an Instagram post, yeah, cool,” Tszyu told AAP in Sydney on Wednesday.
He said he hadn’t targeted getting a world ranking before the end of 2024.
“For me, I don’t really try and focus on that stuff, the business side of things is for my management and for my promoters to deal with,” Tszyu said.
Mazoudier has scored wins over Joel Camilleri (twice) and Wade Ryan, both of whom also lost to Nikita’s brother, former WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu.
Southpaw Nikita said he was expecting “a little bit of everything” from Mazoudier, who shapes as one of his best-credentialled opponents.
“(I'm expecting him) to be on the back foot, (or) to be coming forward at times and for these transitions to be quite explosive,” Tszyu said.
“He can just come out of nowhere and start going forward, or he can just go cycling backwards,.
“I’ve prepared for two different types of Koens.”
Tszyu wasn’t getting distracted by talk that a win over Mazoudier could set up a bout with former world title contender Michael Zerafa, who is fighting Sydney veteran Tommy Browne on next week’s card.
"For me everything that comes out with his (Zerafa’s) name on it just sounds like a fart in my ears,” Tszyu said.
“I don’t really listen to anything that comes from him or anything that comes with his name.”
Nikita and Tim have engaged in some famously intense sparring, but the younger brother had no desire to trade punches with his older sibling in the lead-up to next week’s fight against Mazoudier.
“He (Tim) is not sparring a southpaw and I don’t have a death wish,” Nikita joked.
He was cheered by the news that Tim, who lost his WBO title in his last bout, was getting a shot at IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev.
“The moment we found out about it was when I was leaving from America, and you see the joy in everyone’s faces ‘Yes, we’ve got the fight’,” Tszyu said.
