Was second Fury resurrection

to see again,” as Fury’s promoter, Frank Warren, called it.

Two years after he was disgraced, and with a drugs ban behind him, Fury emerged here as a strange kind of inspiration to an audience far greater than the Staples Center crowd of 17,698, at least half of which was British and Irish. Buster Douglas, Lennox Lewis, Michael Spinks and Earnie Shavers were among those in the crowd to see Fury evoke the great recoveries of the 1960s and 1970s when fighters in the heavyweight golden age regularly defied concussive blows to climb to their feet and fight on.

Why? Because they had to. They were fighting for their livelihoods. Carrying on was much less scary to them than surrendering. The big-fight purses are larger now, but still Fury faced a choice. Wilder’s promoter, Shelley Finkel, who “ran to the corner” in the 12th, thinking it was over, said of Fury: “It would have been easy to say, ‘I don’t need to get up’, but he got up.”

Warren was probably right to say of his man: “On home turf, he’d have won that fight.” Fury, while aggrieved, knew he had escaped an ignominious end and initially accepted the outcome but changed his mind yesterday morning: “I have never seen a worse decision in my life. It’s stuff like this that gives boxing a bad name. I’m the lineal heavyweight champion of the world. I ain’t just going to lay down because I got punched in the face and knocked down. I’m going to get up and fight.” There was no dissent when he said: “I am a true-bred fighting man.”

Peacekeeper was another role he added to his repertoire of weightloss expert and comeback king. After the draw was announced, he defused the tension in the arena: “I was telling my brothers and my family to keep quiet. There were about 8,000 Travellers and Brits. Ten thousand. They probably would have smashed the ring up if I’d instigated it. I just wanted to be an ambassador for my country and my people. I’m a realist. I thought I won the fight. I thought most people thought I won the fight. I’m

‘I ain’t going to lay down because I got punched. I’m going to get up and fight’

not going to cry over spilt milk.”

Foremost among his missions is to light that trail for people with mental illness, though not everyone can achieve what he has (and so should not feel under external pressure to do so). “There weren’t a lot of people who thought I could come here and box like that,” Fury said. “Two and a half years out of the ring. It’s not any secret what I’ve been doing out of the ring. I’ve been living like a rock star, but that ain’t great, by the way. I fought back from suicide and depression and mental health and anxiety, and I wanted more than anything to show the world it can be done.”

Wilder, he said, had “lightning fists and dynamite in his hands” but was also too pumped. “I got out of the game plan a little bit because I was trying to get him out of there,” the defending champion said. He missed with so many haymakers that he hyper-extended his right arm (“my elbow started hurting and everything”).

Fury started a rendition of American Pie at the post-fight press conference. The singing was spirited and some of the words apt: “And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people dance

And maybe they’d be happy for a while.”