Tim Tszyu and Errol Spence Jr shake hands after the fight. Photograph: Brendon Thorne\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nTszyu\u2019s triumph was also his first since appointing the legendary Jeff Fenech as trainer and preserved his family\u2019s incredible 31-year unbeaten record in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sydney slayer has now won all 26 of his fights on home soil, with his Hall of Fame father Kostya (18-0) and younger brother Nikita (12-0) also unbeaten in Australia for an incredible 56-0 tally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSydney, Australia, the Tszyu legacy is continuing,\u201d Tszyu said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Spence, it is the end of the road after the Texan announced his immediate retirement following only the second defeat of is own Hall of Fame career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many questioned whether the 35-year-old would be the same fighter after his crushing 2023 loss to Crawford, which came four years after the southpaw was involved in an horrific car accident and ejected at speed from his Ferrari.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the veteran played his part in one last epic contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI asked a lot of questions for myself, now it\u2019s time to go home with my family and start a new life,\u201d Spence said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a great time for myself, but it\u2019s time to be with my family and live that family life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got my faculties intact. Everything\u2019s good, man. I\u2019ve got a beautiful family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spence was the busier fighter early, but Tszyu snatched the opening round after landing a big overhand right to his opponent\u2019s head late on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American landed a heavy straight left in the second and continued peppering Tszyu with his signature jab in round three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tszyu hit back to take round four with a lovely combination and then a right uppercut to place Spence on notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spence, though, was relentless, throwing twice as many punches to Tszyu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hometown hero needed to find something – and did. Tszyu landed another huge blow to his rival\u2019s head as tensions rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spence had only ever been dropped twice in his illustrious career, both times in his loss to Crawford, but Tszyu almost put the Texan on the canvas again with yet another thunderous right in round seven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not surprising after a helter-skelter encounter, the two warriors began to tire yet both continued searching for the winning knockout that never came.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tim Tszyu has restored his global reputation with a rousing victory over the US great Errol Spence Jr in the pair\u2019s middleweight blockbuster in Sydney. Rebranded as \u201cthe Phoenix\u201d, Australia\u2019s former WBO world champion rose again in front of a raucous sellout crowd at Afterpay Arena on Sunday to rocket back to prominence. Boxing\u2019s recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":52911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"theguardian","_post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com","footnotes":""},"categories":[3295],"tags":[5144,3347,10855,12741,5810,13175,9171,9478,3015,5455,2479,1444,10771,7519,5721,5612,11973,9513,8443,7639,3346,10374,6348,10885,10376,36,7560,7082],"class_list":["post-52910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sport","tag-accident","tag-australia","tag-blows","tag-bout","tag-boxing","tag-car","tag-crowd","tag-dropped","tag-epic","tag-family","tag-ferrari","tag-hell","tag-horrific","tag-judges","tag-losses","tag-money","tag-one","tag-phoenix","tag-retirement","tag-rocket","tag-sydney","tag-terence-crawford","tag-us","tag-victory","tag-welterweight","tag-world","tag-world-champion","tag-world-title"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52912,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52910\/revisions\/52912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Anthony](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/3dcafde789503b028b383421a63395aa709d598f\/300_0_4360_3489\/master\/4360.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=fadb94e94a4cc22637702b8c280f623c\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Tim](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/79ac1fc6b5534a4cda7456d8b45e573eeb36741a\/0_0_3889_2592\/master\/3889.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none\")
<\/a>