Fury sets sights on Joshua after astonishing win in US
Tyson Fury inhabits that exotic realm where mastery and madness collide. His demolition of Deontay Wilder to become a two-time heavyweight champion of the world was a miniature symphony of sport at its rawest, and of theatre at its most unhinged.
It began with his ring-walk, combining the bombast of a mock throne with the strains of Patsy Cline’s Crazy. It peaked, in a horribly vampiric flourish, with him licking the blood off his opponent’s neck. And it ended with the sight of Fury, his gaudy belts slung over his shoulders, leading his Las Vegas disciples in a rendition of Don Mclean’s American Pie.
As ever, Fury bulldozed convention as emphatically as he floored Wilder. Nothing about this comic-book colossus belongs in central casting. He stands 6ft 9in, while weighing anything from 19st at his fittest to 28st at his most
‘The nagging question is how euphoric we can be about a star with Fury’s history of unpalatable rhetoric. He is never about to join the woke fraternity’
dissolute. He wages a perpetual battle with demons that have taken him to the brink of suicide. He is so fiercely proud of his Irish traveller lineage that he calls himself the “Gypsy King”.
Throw it all together and you have a fighter who can reduce anybody, the previously unbeaten Wilder included, to a state of helpless terror.
There was once a time when Britain preferred to disown Fury, not embrace him. His public statements have been a catalogue of outrage: he once declared that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen and on her back”, while conflating homosexuality with paedophilia. He has also served a two-year ban after testing positive for nandrolone, a transgression that he blamed on eating uncastrated wild boar. Even when trying to excuse a doping violation, Fury is anything but scripted.
Today, though, there is a dilemma now that Fury is boxing’s most compelling draw. Forget Wilder, whose bludgeoning at the MGM Grand punctured any claims to greatness. For the moment, forget even Anthony Joshua, whose sole defeat at the hands of Andy Ruiz Jnr hinted at a susceptibility that Fury has never shown. On one rare occasion that Fury crumpled to the canvas, against Wilder 14 months ago, he gazed at the ceiling with demonic defiance, beating the count to force Saturday night’s fateful rematch.
Such is the restlessness in boxing, and the endless efforts of promoters to outdo each other, the clamour for an all-british unification fight between Fury and Joshua has already started. It may grant Fury, whose heart has never left Morecambe, a home crowd, though there is speculation that such a contest could be bound for Saudi Arabia. For five years, he has specialised in being the underdog on tour, vanquishing Wladimir Klitschko in Düsseldorf and snatching that improbable first draw with Wilder in Los Angeles. This time, he has written his name in lurid Vegas neon, a feat that so many of his British forebears, from Frank Bruno to Ricky Hatton, have failed to manage.
Amid all the haste to orchestrate an encore, it is a moment that deserves to be savoured on its own merits. We had dared imagine that British heavyweight boxing reached its zenith when Joshua laid out Klitschko on a thunderous Wembley night almost three years ago. Fury’s performance eclipses it for prestige: where the Ukrainian was an ageing adversary who tired under bombardment from the younger man, Wilder was a diagram of dangerous power, with 41 knockouts to his name. That Fury sent him sprawling not once, but three times with seven rounds of front-foot belligerence, offered testament to an astounding sporting talent.
The nagging question is how euphoric we can be about a star with Fury’s history of unpalatable rhetoric. He is never about to join the woke fraternity, not while he says that Dame Jessica Ennis-hill “slaps up good”. For some, he will remain forever beyond the pale: Greg Rutherford, for example, initially refused even to share a stage with him when the two were shortlisted for BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2015. To which Fury, true to form, responded: “Who is he exactly?”
Ultimately, there needs to be a different prism through which to view Fury, a perspective that reconciles his opposing personas as master boxer and lumpen provocateur.
Contrary to the image he has projected, there are facets to his character that temper his streak of malevolence. Fury, like his wife Paris, left school at 11 without any qualifications, but has urged his children to continue their education, not to be beholden to the traditions of the traveller community.
There is a powerful redemptive arc to this tale. Fury has gone to the darkest places in his life, disclosing that he still believes he will be dead within a year if he hangs up his boxing gloves. And yet he has rebounded to become a world heavyweight champion, the most cherished individual accolade in sport.
As the Gypsy King goes global, we can be in no doubt he will
continue to confound.
Everyone likes a good redemption story and there are few to match that of Tyson Fury. A few years ago, the self-styled Gypsy King from Manchester was apparently washed up after surprising the boxing world by taking the heavyweight title from the seemingly unbeatable Wladimir Klitschko.
Coping with this success took its toll on Fury’s physical and mental health. He plunged into depression, gave up his titles, his weight ballooned to 28 stone, he was banned after failing a drug test and he contemplated suicide.
Yet in the early hours of yesterday he won the title back with what experts called the best ever performance by a British heavyweight abroad, beating the American Deontay Wilder.
Rocky does not even come close.