To be Frank, Fury’s worst opponent is the final bell
RETIREMENT WAS HELL FOR BRUNO
FRANK BRUNO turns 60 next month and knows, from lacerating experience, Tyson Fury’s hardest fight may lie ahead of him.
It will not be Saturday night’s best-of-three decider against Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas or the heavyweight battle of Britain with Anthony Joshua everyone wants to see but is currently booked for the 12th of never.
For national treasure Bruno, the pain began when the music stopped. He missed boxing so much he built a ring in his back garden and slept in it.
His mental health became a reflection of the skies overhead – some days clear but occasionally giving way to dark clouds.
Nobody was better qualified to sit down with Fury – whose searing openness about his own depression makes his eminence as WBC champion even more remarkable – than Bruno, who wore the same belt 25 years ago.
And we can only hope Fury heeds his predecessor’s wise words after Big Frank warned: “When you finish boxing, that’s when the fight starts.”
Bruno was in good form at the premiere in London of Wow Hydrate’s Tyson Fury and Frank Bruno, a short film in which Britain’s big-bang merchants share their experiences of mental health.
First, the obvious: Bruno thinks Fury will settle all arguments on Saturday. “I think Tyson won’t just beat Wilder again, he’ll school him,” said Bruno. “He’s a much better boxer, and Fury will be going in nearly 5st heavier.”
Bruno’s career was ended by conclusive defeat in his rematch with Mike Tyson in 1996, and by his own admission the fall-out was harder to take than Iron Mike’s thunderous blows.
He said: “It affected my family life in a big way because I wasn’t the same. When I finished, my trainer George Francis told me, ‘This is when the fight starts’.
“When you’ve finished and you’re not coming down the gym and you’re not keeping up your routine, something flips. You get very vexed or very upset very quickly and you can be a not very nice person to be around.”
In the film, Fury acknowledges Bruno’s significance as one of the first sportsmen to confront his demons in the public eye.
“I didn’t have any choice,” said Bruno. “I remember when I lived in Essex and I got sectioned the first time, I did the 28 days and I went down the shop... you could feel people were looking and thinking, ‘Here comes the local nutter’. Years ago, you couldn’t talk to anybody because they’d be taking the p*** out of you as soon as I went out of the room.
“But I don’t blame boxing – boxing saved my life. It’s a good sport. If I’d listened to my friends years ago I’d have been robbing a bank. Looking back, I probably first realised I had a problem when I was at boarding school. It didn’t affect my career because I was too busy training.
“That’s why it’s good to chat and get it off your plate. Some people didn’t understand about the way I felt – schizophrenic, manic, depressed.
“Please don’t feel bad, talk to someone.
“It’s nice that someone like Tyson Fury can speak so honestly about it and talk straight.”
● Fury and Bruno discuss Wilder, Joshua and their respective mental health battles ahead of Fury-Wilder 3. Watch the video on Wow Hydrate’s YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/ hrZNNQl1LlU