You’ve been in an abusive relationship for years and you’re finally fed up. You pack your bags, get on the bus to go back home, but then he catches up with you and begs you to come back. How can this be?
6:47 a.m. Eastern Time
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ESPN’s Mark Kriegel
MORECAMBE, England – Morecambe is a town in the English county of Tyson Fury never saw himself doing anything other than becoming the world heavyweight champion when he was a kid. It was destiny, possibly prophecy, and without a doubt, God’s will, in his delightfully extravagant way of thinking — something necessary of a true heavyweight champ, that is, a boxer for whom mythology and marketing are one in the same — But now that he’s at the top of his game as a boxer and an attraction — 94,000 tickets for Fury’s championship defense against Dillian Whyte this Saturday at Wembley Stadium were sold in a couple of hours — he’s announcing his retirement.
“I’m going away after this battle,” he said. “Many people do not believe me. ‘He ain’t going to walk away,’ I saw my father give an interview the other day. He can’t imagine his life without boxing.’ But that’s where everyone underestimates the huge GK [for Gypsy King], and I’m OK without it.”
C’mon.
“I’m a two-time world heavyweight champion,” adds Fury, who is still just 32 years old. “In my 13th, almost 14th, year as a professional, I am undefeated. I’ve won every single belt there is. A number of records were broken. You’ve done a great deal of good….”
True, but…
“I was able to assist a large number of folks.”
But what could possible feed that heavyweight ego in retirement?
“He continues, oblivious to my obvious scepticism, “I helped myself, I helped my family.” We’d be safe for the rest of our lives. I’m going out on a high note. What more is there to say?”
There’s also the question of the three additional belts, which Oleksandr Usyk presently holds.
“All of which I’ve already owned,” he says.
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Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte undercard, Saturday, 1 p.m. ET on ESPN+
Tyson Fury takes on Dillian Whyte in a 12-round fight on ESPN+ PPV on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET for Fury’s WBC heavyweight belt.
One of boxing’s oldest clichés is the threat of retirement. The truth is that if fighters were better at retiring, they would leave the game significantly less injured than they do now. They tend to return to the same ego that made them champions in the first place. Meanwhile, a four-belt belt unification match between the eventual winner of Usyk vs. Joshua might be not only the richest fight in history, but also an appealing proposal for a champion like Fury, who has no true precedent.
How could you not be interested…
“How could I not?” he asks, his brow arched in mockery of the query.
On the night of his second bout with Deontay Wilder, I remember Fury assuring me, during his self-styled dramatic pause, that he would stride right across the ring and beat up the then-feared American champion. At the time, I didn’t believe him. But I’m starting to believe him. Furthermore, Fury believes it — at least for the time being — and that is precisely the purpose. He was created by belief; it is his holy obstinacy.
Isn’t there a draw to it?
He responds, “Not really.” “‘When I go away, I’m never coming back,’ I used to say. Never.’”
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On April 23, Tyson Fury fights Dillian Whyte for the first time since a battle against Francesco Pianeta in 2018. via AP/John Walton
FURY WAS BORN THREE MONTHS EARLY, ON THE 12TH OF AUGUST 1988. Mike Tyson, the last heavyweight champion America thought worthy of mythologizing, had memorably knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds earlier that summer, and his father named him after him.
“It took a thousand years to breed my kid,” says Fury the elder, still smiling with delight.
At the very least, a few of centuries.
Tyson Fury’s lineages on both sides of his family are filled with “Gypsy Kings,” Travellers regarded as the greatest bare-knuckled warriors of their times. According to Fury’s memoirs, “Behind the Mask,” they battled in mines and racetracks, campgrounds, quarries, and, of course, pubs. Bartley Gorman, Tyson’s cousin, was a bare-knuckle champion from 1972 until 1992 and was dubbed “the most deadly unarmed guy on the world.”
That Bartley Gorman, however, is not to be confused with Tyson’s great-great-great grandfather, Bartley Gorman, who became monarch in County Mayo, Ireland in the 1800s. There was also Ticker Gorman and Othea Burton, as well as Tyson’s father, “Gypsy John” Fury.
John claims, “I was the best Fury.” “Apart from me, son,” says the narrator.
He’s not talking about his professional record, which is 8-4-1 as a local heavyweight in and around Manchester, according to Boxrec.com, but about his standing as a bare-knuckled fighter. John was the kind of person who would sit around a campfire with the elders and tell the boldest young brawlers stories “Please let me to smash your nose. That way, you’ll know it was done by a nice guy.”
That’s the end of rites of passage.
“I’ll put your eye out if I haven’t already,” John adds. “If I have to bite off your nose, I’m going to do it. I’ll do whatever it takes to win.”
Tyson, on the other hand, was not like that. He’d always been tall and big (140 pounds as a ten-year-old), but he didn’t seem to have the disposition. Despite the fact that Gypsy John’s offspring would grow to 6-foot-9 and have an unheard-of 85-inch reach, Tyson has never fought in anything more than a street brawl.
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Joe Tessitore speaks with Tyson Fury before of his Saturday fight with Dillian Whyte.
Despite this, he challenged the King at the age of 14 and admitted to his father that films of his battles were not very spectacular. Put on the gloves, his father said. This was near Uncle Hughie’s old tire shed, where Tyson spent most of his early boxing training.
It was short-lived. Tyson landed a left hook to the body on his father. Three ribs were broken. If his kid had just retrieved a sword from a stone, John would have been overjoyed.
That was the end of it. The youngster would go on to become the global champion. “I wasn’t the best spouse,” John admits, assessing his strengths and weaknesses. “I’d tell Missus I’d be out getting a newspaper and travelling to Spain for a month.”
Then there were the four years he spent in prison for an attack that resulted in the loss of an eye for the other party (result of a longstanding beef, John says, insisting that the gougee was infamous as a police informant in the Travellers community).
John, he admitted, wasn’t the most level-headed individual. He admits, “There were moments when I was crazier than a box of frogs.” “However, I was a fantastic parent.”
That is to say, he constantly reminding Tyson of their ancestors and his fate.
“You tell a youngster that again and over, and guess what? He is convinced.”
“I was quite positive that I was going to be the world heavyweight champion,” Tyson admits. “The faith, the confidence, was there.”
However, its origins remain a mystery. Was it a parental relationship? Internal? Or, as Tyson now implies, divine in some way?
“How? Where did you get it? I’m not sure. My father fought in 13 professional bouts and lost four of them. Isn’t that hardly world champion material?”
But what about his ancestors, all those warring kings?
“There was no breeding to be the world heavyweight champion,” he claims. “They were all warriors and scrappers. We may go to a bar today and locate a scrapper, but it doesn’t imply his kid will become the world heavyweight champion, does it? As a result, I think I’ve been picked.”
Maybe he is. Even still, the fate he pictured as a child is little, insignificant, and much less likely than what has really occurred. Go through your collection of real and imagined boxing legends, from Muhammad Ali to “Rocky.” If Fury wins and walks away on Saturday, his narrative may well be the most compelling of them.
Tyson Fury retired from boxing in 2016, when he was 25-0 and the unified heavyweight champion. Jon Super/AP Photo
Fury got in his Ferrari and drove to the Barton Bridge, which spans the Manchester Ship Canal, in the summer of 2016, just months after capturing three belts from Wladimir Klitschko. A 400-pound guy in the throes of despair, he’d been drinking and drugging. Fury says, “I’d been thinking about it for a long time.” “And I finally determined that this was the day, and that this was how it would happen.”
He made the decision to put an end to it by crashing the Ferrari into the bridge stanchions. The speedometer indicated 160 miles per hour. He was crazier than a box of frogs, as his father put it.
What did you have in mind at the time? I enquire.
“What are you doing right now? Apart from winding up in a padded room, I didn’t think anything else was conceivable.”
And then?
He adds, “I heard a voice talk to me as clearly as I’m speaking to you.” “‘Do not do this,’ it warned. Consider your children. Consider your family. Everyone’s life are going to be ruined by you.’”
Whose voice is it? I enquire.
“I feel it was a gift from God.”
Fury made a U-turn.
“I realized I couldn’t do it alone any longer. I need medical assistance.”
The tale of Fury’s recovery has been recounted many times, but never fully contextualized: his successful trilogy with Deontay Wilder, his ultimate advocacy on the topic of mental health. Unlike Ali, Fury was not martyred. On the cover of Esquire, no one imagined him as St. Sebastian. It’s one thing for an athlete to recover from a 400-pound weight loss. Or from the use of drugs and alcohol. Or, more often, orthopedic degeneration. Fury, on the other hand, returned from what the rest of the world refers to as madness. Furthermore, he had no wellspring of kindness from which to draw. He was sacked as an indolent bigmouth and departed the game for three years. He was loathed by everyone. And nowhere was he more reviled than in his own of the United Kingdom.
“We will always be nasty Gypsy bastards to the authorities that are here in this nation,” his father adds. Being a Traveller might be part of it. But there was another factor: Tyson Fury was everything a British heavyweight shouldn’t be: agile, arrogant, witty, and very talented.
I remember a talk with Colin Hart of The Sun, the dean of British boxing reporters for many years. “Success makes us envy,” he added. “It’s a national characteristic.”
The “lovable losers” — rigorously humble and self-effacing warriors like Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno — appealed to British sensibilities, particularly in heavyweights. Tyson, on the other hand, was loud and flamboyant, with a naturally balletic flair. His sensitivities were nearly American, dread the notion.
Generations of British people have attempted to conquer the United States. Tyson Fury, on the other hand, is the only one who has succeeded. Tyson got more American as the sport became more British. Furthermore, television, that most American of institutions, was the catalyst for his metamorphosis.
“I was born to be on American television,” he claims. “I consider boxing to be a kind of entertainment.”
It all started with the build-up to the first Wilder match. On the mike, he was fantastic, but the general consensus on both sides of the Atlantic was that his linguistic brilliance would fade as soon as Wilder knocked him out. Not only did it not happen, but the precise moment of Tyson’s star-studded ascension to fame is documented. It was the 1st of December, 2019. Tyson came back from a knockdown by Deontay Wilder with 2:10 remaining in the 12th round.
A draw has never been more of a victory. The persona to whom he was now being likened was The Undertaker, a wrestler rather than a warrior. What’s more American than that?
It was then cake — or maybe apple pie is a better metaphor — from there. Fury quickly rose to prominence as the star of lavishly staged ring walks in which he portrayed Apollo Creed or wore a massive Mexican sombrero. With the seasoned honesty of a reality star, he’d began giving de facto sermons on mental health. He did his training in Vegas. I purchased a home in Las Vegas. I worked for the WWE for a while. SugarHill Steward, descendant of the famous Emanuel Steward, was his American trainer. But, most importantly, in a society that despises losers, Fury was a winner, forcing the dreaded Wilder twice into submission.
“For me, America has been a beacon of light,” adds Fury. “They welcomed me in as one of their own, encouraged me, and compensated me. I became a celebrity in America.”
The irony is that it took American celebrity for him to regain popularity in the United Kingdom.
Tyson Fury won the third and final fight in his trilogy against Deontay Wilder via knockout in October 2021. Getty Images/Al Bello
“I’ve only acquired the respect and adoration of the British fans after an open fight with mental health,” he adds, “after travelling to America and toppling their long-reigning champion.”
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As evidence, I provide them 94,000 tickets, which were unthinkable just a few years ago. “On my own, I shattered all the records and sold out Wembley,” he adds, dismissing Dillian Whyte’s unwillingness to engage in any marketing prior to fight week as insignificant. “Except for myself, I don’t think any other athlete in the world is capable of doing so. This has never, ever been done before.”
They were sparring partners a decade ago, according to Whyte. Fury recalls, “He used to help me out in camp, and I used to help him out.” “Dillian is a capable and reliable heavyweight. He has a solid left hook, a nice catch and counter, and he isn’t a pushover.”
Nonetheless, Fury adds: “He’s never competed on the international stage of professional boxing, while I’m a seasoned pro. Whether he wants to accept it or not, it will be a factor. He’s never done anything like this before. It all comes to a head with [my] massive right hand exploding on Dillian Whyte’s face.”
I inquire if he could be more explicit about the time and length of the event.
“There’s no way it’ll go through the midrounds.”
The first time he told me he was going to rush across the ring and knock down Wilder, I had to hold back a chuckle. I’m no longer laughing. “That trilogy with Wilder made Tyson into a new fighter,” Steward told boxing journalist John Brister.
“I used to be a slick mover and a dancer,” Fury explains. “Today, I’m a glory-at-all-costs kind of person.”
“I’m trying to knock motherf—-er out,” he says as he spars in a 16-foot ring.
To put it another way, this Gypsy King has begun to resemble his forefathers.
ONE MAY CONSIDER WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A “risk it all for glory man.” For a warrior like Fury, the audience is a narcotic in and of itself, and 94,000 is a strong dosage.
How do you get back on your feet after something like that? What makes you think you can simply walk away?
Wladimir Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali: he insists, moving backwards, listing names like a pugilistic genealogy, the pedigree of another dynasty to which he belongs:
He adds, “I’m merely a drop in the ocean.” “Soon, another good-looking young man will arrive and knock everyone unconscious. And then there was another. And so on.”
There will never be another Tyson Fury, no matter how long the dynasty lasts. He was a one-of-a-kind guy and combatant. And I find myself wishing he would just stay a little longer so he could smash up his youthful would-be successor.
At the very least, the youngster will know that it was done by a nice guy.
