Fury won’t lose world title over doping allegation, says WBC chief

LONDON: Tyson Fury’s reign as world heavyweight champion will not be ended by new claims over an alleged drug-testing scam, according to WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman.

It was alleged in a Mail on Sunday report a farmer was offered money to provide an alibi for Fury’s failed drugs test in 2015.

Fury and his cousin Hughie tested positive for nandrolone in 2015, which they blamed on eating uncastrated wild boar meat, citing a farmer called Martin Carefoot who claimed to have provided them with the product.

After an expensive and elongated stand-off with UK Antidoping, Fury and Hughie received retrospective two-year bans and were able to resume their careers in December 2017.

In the Mail report, Carefoot denied having provided the Fury team with the meat, insisting he was offered £25,000 to make up the story in order to aid their case. But Sulaiman, whose WBC belt Fury won against Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas last month, said the allegations would have “no impact” on his reign as champion. “I prefer to believe Tyson Fury ahead of someone who has already admitted to lying in legal documents for financial gain,” Sulaiman said. “The person who has claimed he accepted money to lie should be the one on trial especially when he waited five years to tell his story. Secondly, around this time Tyson was not involved with the WBC, he did not fight Klitschko for the WBC belt, it was for other titles, so this issue does not impact on him.”