Tszyu will first take a tune-up fight next month in his native Australia, where he’s an attraction, per sources.

The Spence-Tszyu fight – one that will mark Spence’s debut at junior middleweight following a long welterweight title reign – is likely to take place in the Dallas area or Australia. Texas’ Spence has headlined at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, multiple times.

Spence (28-1, 22 KOs) was in The Ring’s pound-for-pound top five when he last competed, a one-sided ninth-round, technical-knockout loss to Terence Crawford in July 2023. Spence was slated for a 154-pound title shot at Sebastian Fundora – they even faced off after Fundora upset Tszyu by split decision in a bloodbath in March 2024 – but it never materialized.

Spence, a future Hall of Famer, owns wins over Shawn Porter, Mikey Garcia, Danny Garcia, Yordenis Ugas, Lamont Peterson and Kell Brook, whom he traveled to defeat in his hometown of Sheffield, England, for his first title win.

In between those victories, Spence battled through injuries sustained in a near-fatal car accident in 2019, and later a left retinal detachment in 2021 that scrapped a scheduled fight against Manny Pacquiao. Spence turns 36 next month.

Tszyu (26-3, 18 KOs), a son of Hall of Fame boxer Kostya Tszyu, is 2-3 in his past five fights.

His nightmarish 2024 concluded six months after Fundora defeated him with another upset loss in a title fight, this time inside three rounds to Bakhram Murtazaliev. Tszyu rebounded with a fourth-round stoppage of Joey Spencer in April, but that win was followed by another loss to Fundora in July, when Tszyu didn’t answer the bell for the eighth round.

Tszyu returned to the win column in December with a 10-round, unanimous-decision win over lightly regarded Anthony Velazquez.