The Sunday Mail
TYSON FURY had dreamt about winning the world heavyweight title so many times during his 27 years that in the early hours of Sunday morning, as he wrestled with feeling over-wired and overtired, he began to wonder whether his mind was tricking him.
Tyson Fury
“I thought this better not be a dream and I have to fight tomorrow,” he told the reporters squashed around him. “Then I realised it was real. I was the new heavyweight champion of the world!”
Fury celebrated taking Klitschko’s WBA, IBF and WBO titles by serenading the 50,000 crowd at Düsseldorf’s Esprit Arena with Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing and he was no less unorthodox on his first day as champion, as he said goodbye to his camp shortly after midday to catch the overnight ferry to Hull with his pregnant wife, Paris.
There was no sore head, from bottle or fist.
Fury, who has long given up booze, celebrated with the soft stuff and while he agreed that Klitschko had caught him flush a few times, the Ukrainian’s punches had not shaken him and left only minor bruises over his eyes.
“I’m feeling good, apart from my feet,” he said. “They’re absolutely killing me. For some reason they were more affected than any other part of my body. My toes are all blistered from where I was moving so much. I need to invest in a better pair of socks than this pair of 50 for a pound. Even though we had a lot of foam taken out, it was still quite a spongy canvas.
“And as far as I’m concerned right now, if I never win another fight I don’t care because I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve in my life. “I’m a winner and I had a lot of bumps in the road and could have said: ‘I’m done, no more, I’m packing it in.’ I stuck with it and it shows that determination and dedication pays off.”
When Fury was born, in 1988, nearly three months premature, he weighed less than a pound and doctors did not believe that he would survive.
His father, John, named him Tyson, after the then-heavyweight champion of the world, and promised hospital staff his son would not only recover but emulate the famous namesake. How happy he is to have been proven correct.
John was a former professional fighter who also dabbled in unlicensed and bare-knuckle boxing, and as soon as Tyson was old enough to stand he would practise punching his father’s hands. Jab, left hook, one-two-three. At the age of 11, when he first put on a pair of boxing gloves, Fury became convinced – along with everyone else in his family – he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world.
His younger brother Shane was his first sparring partner and they used to “play” boxing all the time. “Even when we weren’t playing, we’d design world championship boxing kits,” explained Fury.
“There was only one pair of gloves in the house. I don’t know why – they were my dad’s old gloves from when he used to train – and they were all stinky and sweaty. So we used to put one glove on each and have tea towels and dishcloths wrapped around our other hand. We used to spar full on in the kitchen, plates going everywhere. It was a big kitchen so we never did any damage.
“We used to have this rug in the kitchen – it wasn’t very big and whoever went off the mat first was out,” he continued. “We’d trade punches. Even before I had an amateur fight me and my dad would spar in the garden. My uncle would say: ‘I’ve never seen a heavyweight move like that.’ At 14 I was 6ft 5in and 16st with a beard probably. He said ‘you will be heavyweight champion of the world’.”
John takes up the story. “I was on the grass one Sunday, it was a lovely sunny afternoon, and him and Shane asked me to spar with them,” he said. “Tyson hit me with a left hook and I felt a searing pain in my side. I thought ‘What, from a 14-year-old lad?’ and I had fought some tough cookies in my time. I thought to myself I’ll have a sit-down. But when I went to get up off the wall, I couldn’t move, I had three broken ribs.
“He was a big 14, around 6ft 5in, 16 stone. He was a fat kid. He was not tall and lean. He loved McDonald’s and burgers. A friend of mine said that although he had layers of fat on him, he had never seen anyone move like him and that he could be a champion.
“He started with amateur boxing and they couldn’t get him a fight because he was so big.”
But despite achieving his childhood dream, Fury expects the crushing depression he feels after every fight to emerge again in the coming days.
“I’ve not crashed quite yet,” he admitted. “It won’t start until I get home, by myself and all the people have gone and I’m home alone.” —Guardian
Tyson sparks fresh controversy
NEW world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has sparked fresh controversy with derogatory remarks about women, including Olympic and world heptathlete champion Jessica Ennis-Hill.
“I believe a woman’s best place is in the kitchen and on her back, that’s my personal belief. Making me a good cup of tea, that’s what I believe,” the 27-year-old Fury is heard saying in a video interview.
Asked his opinion on women in boxing, Fury talked about the ring girls rather than athletes.
“I think they are very nice when they’re walking around that ring holding them cards,” he said.
Asked about British heptathlete Ennis-Hill in the interview, he said: “I think she’s good, she’s won quite a few medals for Britain, she slaps up good as well, when she’s got a dress on she looks quite fit.”
The YouTube footage was uploaded on November 25.
Fury responded to the storm by sending a message to Ennis-Hill’s official Twitter account that claimed he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“If I’m going to get in trouble for giving a woman a compliment what has the world come to, I said u look fit in a dress?” he tweeted. In an interview in the Mail on Sunday last month, Fury drew widespread criticism for condemning the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion.
“My faith and my culture is based on the Bible,” he said.
The BBC has now come under immediate pressure to remove Fury from the list of nominations for its prestigious end-of-year Sports Personality of the Year award.
But a BBC spokesman defended its decision to shortlist the boxer saying this was “not an endorsement of an individual’s personal beliefs”.
“The Sports Personality shortlist is compiled by a panel of industry experts and is based on an individual’s sporting achievement,” the spokesman said.
A petition asking the BBC to remove Fury from the shortlist had attracted more than 45 000 signatures on Friday.
“The BBC clearly do not understand that by nominating Fury . . . they are putting him up as a role model to young people all over the UK and the world,” the petition’s founder, Scott Cuthbertson, said earlier.
Fury’s controversial comments came to light just days after the Englishman’s stunning victory over Wladimir Klitschko in Duesseldorf, which gave him the WBA, IBF and WBO titles and ended the Ukrainian’s nine-year reign as world champion.
Klitschko has already taken up his option for a rematch in the new year. – AFP
