Do we like them?

Do we like Tim Tszyu?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a decent one on character, but the real-good-deeds file is thin, so it stops short of the top end.

Tim Tszyu is boxing royalty in Australia: the son of Kostya Tszyu, who is undefeated on home soil, and the older brother of fellow boxer Nikita. He grew up in the shadow of that name, and made his own mark by winning the WBO light middleweight title on the Gold Coast in 2023.

Then came the rough patch. He lost three world-title fights in the US across 2024 and 2025, and the rebuild has been done at home. He now has Hall of Famer Jeff Fenech, his father Kostya and trainer Johnny Lewis around him, and beat Denis Nurja in April before Errol Spence Jr in July.

The Spence win was a proper moment: a unanimous decision in Sydney, with Spence announcing his retirement afterwards. Tszyu said beating a great like Spence beats any world title for him, and that the Tszyu legacy is continuing. Even in victory, Fenech reportedly had a crack at the corner for letting him absorb punches in the middle rounds.

His one real stoush this year came in January, when Nikita's fight with Michael Zerafa ended in a no contest after head clashes. Tim, who had mocked Zerafa, called it a “cowardly act” according to the Sydney Morning Herald, and said that sort of answer shouldn't come from a boxer. A couple of days later he reckoned the pile-on had gone too far and said he felt sorry for Zerafa, who had apologised for his own comments.

On the harm test, we went looking for anything on trans people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate and found nothing from Tszyu. His public noise is almost all boxing trash talk, plus a dig at influencers and footy players crossing into the ring. That's a thin record rather than a spotless one, but nothing in it is nasty.

The good stuff is modest and local. In 2020 he signed the pledge to save the Carss Park pool, crediting it with shaping his discipline. Beyond that we couldn't find a charity track record in the sources we could open, so we won't pad it out.