The people’s champion? Tyson Fury is more like a circus clown
THERE’S nothing quite like a fight week involving Tyson Fury to prove a truism of boxing — so much that comes before the bell is bull **** . Just as there’s nothing quite like the presence of Oleksandr Usyk to reassure us that authenticity will be found behind at least one microphone in the coming days.
That they collide next Saturday in Saudi Arabia for each of the four heavyweight belts is a strange and brilliant thing. For all the damage boxing inflicts on itself, for all the exasperation it can cause, there will always be a thrilling fascination in discovering which big man is truly the best of them.
It’s been 25 years, going back to Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield, since there was a fight like this in the division — one where every prize was on the table and all the fragments of a dysfunctional alphabet were pieced together, if only for a little while.
That’s special in its unique way. It’s a validity boxing is forever striving to forfeit, but there is no disputing that this rare act of competency has brought together the two leading heavyweights of the age. Those being two men who could scarcely be more different, were it not for a shared excellence in violent games.
For my money, I’m picking Fury and that stirs an odd, conflicted feeling. I’ve previously described him as the most objectionable giant of British sport and I’m yet to discover evidence that compels much of a rethink.
The short of it is that I don’t see what Fury sees when he looks in the mirror. I too see a fighter of remarkable gifts. A warrior who could get off the canvas to beat Deontay Wilder and a genius who outsmarted Wladimir Klitschko. I see him edging out a marvel with a smaller frame on Saturday. But I don’t see the people’s champion, which is the slogan he sells for £24.99 on hoodies on his website. Equally I wonder if boxing is the only realm where such nonsense would be given a licence to fly.
Of course, it should always be remembered that this is a canvas of contradictions — a pantomime that at once can be so fake and so real.
I’ve been drawn to boxing throughout my life as a watcher of sport and someone who writes about it. That is something I’ve often wrestled with, felt uncomfortable about, and I’ve enjoyed much of it all the same. I sometimes worry what that signifies.
But many of the most selfless people I’ve met have been in boxing. Some of the best tales and origin stories I’ve heard came from boxers. And when they get in the ring, all of the lies they may have told to fill the room, all of the garbage spouted by the many who exploit them, are swapped for a brand of searing honesty. The truth of their character, their will, their substance, is invariably revealed when they are left alone with the other fella. It is brutal and dirty and a bit wrong; a sport that is doped up and influenced by gangsters and yet pure in different ways.
You need a certain cognitive dissonance to really get it and you need a certain cognitive dissonance to go along with Tyson Fury in particular. I can just about do one and most definitely not the other.
This is a guy who loudly championed a cartel boss in Daniel Kinahan not so long ago. A guy who was banned for a failed drugs test. A guy who in 2015 outlined his belief that ‘a woman’s best place is in the kitchen and on her back’, and who, around the same time, bracketed homosexuality and abortion with paedophilia as the strands that will bring the ‘devil home’. When one of my colleagues wrote what he had said in their interview, Fury encouraged a member of his entourage to beat him up.
Maybe some of this sentiment is a bit dated. A touch lacking in nuance for discussing a complicated character who has inspired many with severe mental health problems. I have admired that in him. And possibly there should be sharper recognition that people can change, because after all the clearest justification for boxing’s latter-day existence comes from its ability to reshape lives.
But I can’t get there with Fury. He has simply said too much out of that sewer pipe beneath his nose and there is no telling what further contributions he will make this week.
If we rewind six months, it was noted by those present at a press conference how Usyk’s promoter was cut off by Fury when he was discussing the sombre importance of their champion in his homeland of Ukraine. That was evidently the cue for Fury to inform Usyk that he is a ‘s***house’ and a ‘p **** with an earring’.
It might have shifted a few tickets, because this is the circus and they always need clowns. I can see that role suiting this show just as easily as I can see only one of the headliners in Saudi Arabia qualifying as a people’s champion.
In the next few days, on various Mail Sport channels, you will see an interview with Usyk, by my colleague Charlotte Daly, that illustrates what he is about. It will talk about war. Heartbreak. Family. How all of that has shaped his arrival to this point. It will be real and it will be sincere. It will also paint a portrait of what the people’s champion might look like to those with an appreciation of class. Of things that are authentic in a sport where so much is fake.
As for Fury? Half the population might object to any such billing. A few gay people and those having an abortion would likely have their doubts, too. They can join up with those who dislike crime lords and others who wonder why there was never a comment from Fury in response to astonishing claims made in these pages in 2020.
If you recall, they came from a farmer alleging he had been bribed by a member of Fury’s team to provide an alibi for one of the positive drugs tests. It all came down to the consumption of uncastrated wild boar.
Discussions like that are part of the soundtrack to Fury’s career, no matter how well he moves for a big man. Discussions around him being the people’s champion are a different kind of balls altogether.