Tyson Fury is back off the canvas with heavyweight history on his side
Fury joins a list of great heavyweights with breaks of two years or more in their records who then, at roughly the same age as the Briton, fought their way back to the heavyweight title
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Your support makes all the difference.After the glory, the fall, the darkest of days, an increase of ten stone in weight and far too many false starts, the return of Tyson Fury is set for Manchester on 9 June.
Fury has his boxing licence back, his waist back, a new desire in his once dead eyes and in the next 18 months he wants some or all of his heavyweight titles back. Fury is still only 29, he has fought the bulge and dropped as much as 100 pounds in fat to confirm his desire to “leave history behind and get back what is mine”.
Fury last fought in November 2015 when he was simply brilliant over twelve rounds in Düsseldorf in front of 50,000 silent fans; he gave Wladimir Klitschko a boxing lesson few expected to see. He left the ring draped in four championship belts and during the next few months he watched helplessly as they were taken back; at the same time his health on both sides of the ropes went into vicious free-fall.
At the end of 2016 he was lost, overweight, suicidal and a raging side-lined witness to the Anthony Joshua machine. The rumours of a return, the pledges to end his exile were treated with increasing disdain. Last year Joshua, tired of the endless baiting, told him simply: “Shut up, you fat fuck.” The reply made Fury chuckle.
“When I’m ready to fight Joshua it will be an easy night,” said Fury in London on Thursday. “He struggles with throwing more than one punch – he will not land a punch on me and will need a bag of rice to touch me.” Fury has always had a good boxing brain and is a much smarter fighter than he ever gets credit for, but he often fails to use his brain in his life away from boxing and often bounces from calamity to calamity.
Fury will work with Frank Warren, the promoter, who guided Frank Bruno from the very edges of retirement and then, through a selection of perfect opponents, to a night of tears and joy at Wembley Stadium when Bruno, in his fourth attempt, won the world heavyweight title. Bruno’s win that night and his final journey to that fight remains one of British boxing’s fairy tales.
“He will not be rushed,” insisted Warren. “He will fight the men I pick and he will get there, it will be steady. I’ve done this before, it’s what I do.” Warren has a list of heavyweights, all poised to play their part and get their pay in Fury’s return. “The heavyweight division has been put on notice,” insisted Warren. There will not be an instant big fight; Warren is looking at a sensible and gradual return. “It will be three or four fights, he needs the rounds,” the promoter added.
Fury also confirmed that he will no longer be working with his uncle and former trainer Peter Fury. Before, during and after the Klitschko win so much of the praise was placed at Peter’s feet. That was then and now a young trainer called Ben Davison, with the skimpiest of qualifications, will take over in the corner for one of the highest profile ring returns in decades. It has been Davison’s task to manage the weight loss during the last six months and he has done a great job.
However, arranging runs and a diet must never be confused with what a trainer has to do in the weeks before a real fight – lifting up and easing down an elite athlete is an ancient art – and more importantly on the night in the crucial sixty-second breaks between rounds. Fury and Davison, though, certainly seem happy and he deserves a chance.
Fury joins a list of great heavyweights with breaks of two years or more in their records who then, at roughly the same age as the Briton, fought their way back to the heavyweight title. Muhammad Ali was forced out for over three and returned at 28; Mike Tyson was in exile for over four years and was also 28 when he returned. Bruno had two years and nine months out, came back at 30 for his first resurrection under Mickey Duff and knocked over some seriously compliant opponents. Fury will meet better men than the Dutch publican John Emmen, who was one-round fodder for our Frank in 1991.
Fury’s return is genuinely good news for a thriving heavyweight division which is currently fixated on bold talk of Joshua fighting the American Deontay Wilder, the only American to create heavyweight currency on his own soil, for sums similar to the money Tyson pocketed 25 years ago. Fury is back and a lot of the current heavyweights will start to feel a little uneasy – and so they should.
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