It’s Fury’s little and large show!
For Tyson Fury, the recovered depressive, life is all bright and beautiful as he limbers up mentally for tonight’s return from almost a thousand days out of the ring.
The latest shaft of dazzling sunlight has been beamed upon him by one of boxing’s living legends.
roy Jones Jnr, the best fighter in the world when he was making his ascent from middleweight to the heavyweight crown, went out of his way to visit the Gypsy King in Manchester before his comeback.
Fury was touched not only by the gesture but by Jones’s critique of his ability. The giant traveller reports: ‘roy said it was unnatural for someone as big as me to have so much movement, talent and skill. He said he has never seen anything like it in his lifetime in boxing.
‘He was in Newcastle doing a show and was adamant he wanted to see me. I told him I couldn’t break camp, so he said he would drive over. It’s always nice to be appreciated but coming from a fighter as great as him it was a huge compliment.’
Fury is a remarkably mobile athlete for a man who stands 6ft 9in and weighs more than 19½ stone after training down from the 27 stone to which he ballooned during more than two and a half years of inaction following his epic victory over Wladimir Klitschko. He has this to say to Sefer Seferi, the little-known Albanian veteran who will occupy the opposite corner in the Manchester Arena: ‘There ain’t never been no one like me. Never a 6ft 9in southpaw-orthodox, counter-puncher with this boxing brain and who moves like a middleweight. I am a freak of nature.’
Seferi was in no position to argue as Fury picked him up at the weigh-in. Then they cuddled, Seferi burying his head in the former world heavyweight champion who stands 10 inches taller and 4st 10lb heavier.
Despite shedding eight stone, Fury still carries surplus poundage around his waist and lower back. That makes Seferi a wise warm-up choice before Fury sets about ‘proving I’m the best heavyweight in the world’.
That prediction he proposes to justify by beating Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder ‘on the same night if they want’. He adds: ‘They may not fancy it but it will be a travesty for boxing if we don’t all fight each other like in the old days... and may the best man win. Me.’
Fury is happy at last and nothing should disturb this new-found reverie tonight. Seferi, 39, has lost just once in his career but that was on the only occasion when he moved up from cruiserweight to heavyweight.
There is some evidence Seferi might give Fury the workout he needs. In his one defeat, Seferi took WBA ‘regular’ world heavyweight champion Manuel Charr the distance. With Charr at ringside, Fury is hoping to provide a form line to a challenge for that belt in the autumn.
Manchester’s own Terry Flanagan faces a more difficult bid to become a two- division world champion as he and American Maurice Hooker dispute the vacant WBo junior welterweight title. TV: LIVE