The Sunday Mail
TYSON Fury has fundamentally ruled out a fight with Tony Bellew due to fears he would ‘damage him properly’ and then ‘feel bad for the rest of my life’.
Bellew named Fury as a possible opponent and claimed he would beat him after demolishing David Haye inside five rounds in their bitter rematch earlier this month.
But Fury, who is primed to make his return to the ring after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus on June 9, insisted he has no desire to fight Bellew as the Evertonian is considerably smaller and doesn’t belong in the ring with him
“To be honest and this is me speaking very honestly and openly, I don’t want to fight Tony Bellew,’ Fury told FightHype.
“The reason being, he is a family man and he has got a wife and kids and I want him to stay healthy and stay boxing, earn a few quid and go home easy to his family.
“But if he steps in the ring with the Gypsy King and I unleash hell’s fire on him, he’s only a small man and I could damage and hurt him properly.
“You are not messing with a David Haye who is 20 years out of date, you’re messing with someone who is 6ft 9in, 19 stone, in the prime of his life who could knock a wall down.
“One of the hardest punchers in heavyweight boxing but they don’t know it.
“I don’t want to fight Tony Bellew, Tony Bellew is a light heavyweight, cruiserweight at best, so if I go in there and hurt him, what good is that?
“How good does that make me feel when he shouldn’t be in the ring anyway.
‘Listen, we all need money but he doesn’t need money that bad to go lose his senses and get smashed to pieces.
“And all this nonsense that he could knock me out, please, I would let Tony Bellew hit me there (points to chin) and it wouldn’t hurt me and that’s just it.
“(Wladimir) Klitschko detonated a right hand on that jaw there, it got banged but never wobbled me once.
“You saw what he did to Joshua with the same punch.
“So Tony, poor old Tony, it would be like a feather duster, dusting me up and down.’
The former WBC cruiserweight champion has got other options open to him and has even refused to rule out retirement at this stage.
Bellew did however call out the retired great Andre Ward in the aftermath of his brutal knockout win over Haye and is also eyeing a rematch with Adonis Stevenson, who stopped the ‘Bomber’ on his feet at light heavyweight back in 2013.
The self-styled Gypsy King has urged the 35-year-old to go down one of those routes before hanging up his gloves as fighting him would be like a ‘pit bull against a Jack Russell’.
He added: “On a serious note, I don’t want to fight Tony because at the end of the day Tony should fight Andre Ward or someone on that level who is a light puncher and smaller and then pack it in.
“He has done very well and I’m proud of him but he doesn’t want no part of this trust me that. I don’t want to go in there because like I said, if I hurt him I will be feeling bad all my life.
“He has got kids and wife, it is a sport at the end of the day, it’s like putting a pit bull down to a Jack Russell, it’s not fair is it but that’s what it would be.
“Steve Cunningham said after the fight: ‘It’s like fighting three men while having a fridge freezer on top of you.’ Tony Bellew is no Steve Cunningham, so I feel for him, I want him to fight somebody he is capable of beating and then retire.
“I know it is a publicity stunt and Eddie Hearn would do anything for money, but one thing Tony, when you’re hurt severely, Eddie Hearn won’t even put a phone call into you, you’re a piece of meat to him so just forget about it.” — Dailymail
