It has now become known that the World Box­ing Orga­ni­za­tion (WBO) has decid­ed to strip Jer­mell Char­lo of his world junior mid­dleweight title. The new cham­pi­on will be Tim­o­fey Tszyu, who holds the inter­im title.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Char­lo refused a fight with Tszyu, who was the offi­cial chal­lenger, accept­ing a fight with box­ing star Saul Alvarez. As not­ed in the WBO state­ment, Char­lo will enter the fight with Cane­lo as a cham­pi­on, but imme­di­ate­ly after that he will lose this sta­tus.

We have col­lect­ed inter­est­ing facts about the ath­lete who con­tin­ued the work of Kostya Tszyu in box­ing.

Training with father and passion for football

Tim­o­fey Tszyu was born on Novem­ber 2, 1994 in Syd­ney. Tim’s par­ents are the leg­endary box­er Kon­stan­tin Tszyu and Natalya Sero­va. Tim­o­fey is Russ­ian by nation­al­i­ty, but his father also has Kore­an roots.

Tim has four broth­ers and sis­ters — two sib­lings (Niki­ta and Anas­ta­sia) and two step-broth­ers (Vladimir and Vic­to­ria). Tim’s younger broth­er Niki­ta Tszyu is also a pro­fes­sion­al box­er.

From an ear­ly age, Timofey’s father taught him to jog and devel­oped willpow­er and char­ac­ter in his son. But the boy did not share his father’s hob­bies and from 6 to 10 years old he did gym­nas­tics. And from 11 to 15 years old he played foot­ball, after which he final­ly went into box­ing.

Tim said that dur­ing a spar­ring ses­sion with his father, he was knocked down. Tszyu Jr. appre­ci­ates his father’s advice and is proud to be com­pared. Many note the exter­nal sim­i­lar­i­ty between Tim and his star dad.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Tim­o­fey calls his main men­tor not his father, but his grand­fa­ther, Boris Tim­o­fee­vich:

“He’s every­thing to me. My grand­fa­ther par­tic­i­pat­ed in all episodes of my box­ing life. He is the key and most impor­tant per­son in my career. And not only in mine, but also in my father’s career. He is both the foun­da­tion and the engine that push­es me for­ward.”

Russian boxer in Australia

Tim­o­fey spent all 28 years of his life in Aus­tralia, but main­tains con­nec­tions with his his­tor­i­cal home­land — he has Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship. Tim com­mu­ni­cates with his fam­i­ly in Russ­ian, but admits that he thinks in Eng­lish.

“I was born in Aus­tralia, but I have Russ­ian roots. Dad, mom, all rel­a­tives are Russ­ian. So I’m Russ­ian too, even though I live in Aus­tralia“- admits Tim­o­fey.

Great pop­u­lar­i­ty in Aus­tralia brought Tim­o­fey not only an impres­sive army of fans, but also acquain­tances with famous col­leagues. Among them is Robert Whit­tak­er, for­mer UFC cham­pi­on. One day he helped Tszyu Jr. pre­pare for bat­tle in the camp.

“Robert and I are two of the best fight­ers in Aus­tralia, so we work togeth­er and help each oth­er achieve our goals so that he becomes a UFC cham­pi­on again and I become a world box­ing cham­pi­on,” Tim said.

In 2016, Tim Tszyu met a girl at a box­ing les­son in Rock­dale. She asked Tim to hold his paws and they have been togeth­er ever since. Alexandra’s friend Kon­stan­tin helps Tim dur­ing train­ing, goes on a diet with him and accom­pa­nies him at tour­na­ments.

Now the cou­ple is not offi­cial­ly mar­ried and has no chil­dren. Tim and Alexan­dra have a French bull­dog Pablo — the box­er bought him as a reward for win­ning his first fight.