Drugs claim is elephant in the ring

BOXING was never great at scanning the room for elephants. And so to another fight for Tyson Fury. If his third engagement with Deontay Wilder follows the patterns of their second, then there will be a cementing of his status as the world’s best heavyweight. As ever with Fury, predicting what will come out of his dressing room is no easier than guessing what might emerge next from his mouth. He is a bit of a riddle, that guy, and while that has doubtless assisted his rise as a great fighter, it is also among the reasons why he isn’t a widely loved one. There will always be caveats with Fury, either as the echo of bigoted remarks or more recently his affiliation with Daniel Kinahan, the alleged mob boss. Of course, the other awkward reality in Fury’s puzzle is that he served an anti-doping ban. Nandrolone. Not recreational. A steroid. Here’s the rub — doping violations in boxing aren’t the scarlet letter they are in safer sports, and if there is a grubbier perversion of logic in any of the worlds of bats, balls and rackets, then what is it? This is why we must go back to elephants, and in particular the one that has accompanied Fury since March 15, 2020, three weeks after he battered Wilder in their second fight. That was the day the Mail on Sunday revealed allegations that a member of Fury’s team had offered a farmer £25,000 to lie about how the fighter failed his drugs test in 2015. In essence Fury was given a backdated ban of two years in 2017, which was considered lenient by some and a reflection of his legal argument that he unknowingly ingested the substance by eating uncastrated wild boar. When the farmer, Martin Carefoot, claimed that he provided a false alibi in return for the promise of money, UK Anti-Doping began a new investigation last year. Sportsmail understands that investigation is ongoing, even without Carefoot’s cooperation and despite his comments being rubbished by Fury’s team. Whether the investigation leads anywhere is another matter. But that investigation is ongoing for now. Bloody big elephant, that.