Boxing’s new heavyweight champ, Tyson Fury, weighed 1 pound when he was born. Three months premature, doctors feared he wouldn’t survive.
But his father had no doubt.
“I told them God was looking down on him,” John Fury told The Mirror, before Tyson Fury dethroned Wladimir Klitschko in a 12-round decision in Germany.
“I said, ‘He’ll be all right. He will be 7 feet, 280 pounds and heavyweight champion of the world.’ And I named him Tyson, after Mike Tyson.”
Fury’s father wasn’t too far off the mark. His son now stands a towering 6-foot-9, weighs 25o pounds — and indeed he is now the heavyweight champion of the world.
“Anybody can be Mr. Boring. That ain’t me.”
- Tyson Fury
Fury outpointed Klitschko on Saturday and took his WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight belts in a huge boxing upset.
Fury threatened to walk away from boxing if he lost to Klitschko, or even if he won. Now the always unpredictable giant says he intends to be a great heavyweight champion.
“I hope to have many more defenses of these titles in future,” Fury said. “If I could be half as good a champion as Wladimir Klitschko, I’d be very, very happy.”
Fury is of Irish-Gypsy heritage and comes from a bloodline of bare-knuckle champions on both sides of his family.
“I’m proud of what I am,” Fury said. “The traveler background gives you the will to win. Before anything else, you learn to fight. When we have a dispute, we sort it out with fisticuffs.”
He says he has his unusual upbringing and devout Christian faith to thank for his success. But critics have said his controversial views make him a bad role model.
Fury is known for foul-mouthed homophobic rants and has been fined for abusing fellow fighters, The Mirror reports.
“There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home: one of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other one’s pedophilia,” Fury told The Daily Mail earlier this month.
“Who would have thought in the ’50s and ’60s that those first two would be legalized?”
Fury shared some of his other controversial views with the Mirror.
“A woman’s there to be loved, cook food and have some kids. Like Muslims have their ways, we have ours. There are girls who open their legs to every Tom, Dick and Harry. They are looked upon as rubbish. If I had a sister who did that, I’d hang her,” Fury said.
Fury said he modeled his career on the man he was named after, The Baddest Man on the Planet.
“Doing controversial things is what you’ll be remembered for,” Fury has said.
“People think of Mike and they don’t think, ‘Youngest heavyweight champ,’ they think of him raping someone, biting an ear off, being the baddest man on the planet.
“Anybody can be Mr. Boring. That ain’t me.”
The 39-year-old Klitschko had reigned for nine years since beating Chris Byrd for the IBF belt in 2006. He defended the title 18 times and hadn’t been beaten since losing to Lamon Brewster in Las Vegas in 2004.
But the unbeaten Fury — 12 years Klitschko’s junior — made the older man look ordinary at the 55,000-seat soccer stadium in Dusseldorf, as the Briton lived up to the promises that few had taken seriously beforehand.
A rematch beckons, a stipulation the Klitschko camp insisted upon in the fight contract.
“So, to be continued. But we can’t yet say how or when or where,” Klitschko said.
Fury, now 25-0 with 18 knockouts, said he would happily fight again in Germany.
“It doesn’t really matter to me where I fight. If you say I’m fighting in Japan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, America, wherever it has to be, it has to be,” Fury said.
“I’d like to come back to Germany again to fight Wladimir. I enjoyed it. I got a great reception from the German fans. The German people really did show me some love.”
Fury had been entertaining them all week. He serenaded Klitschko with his own version of the Bette Midler song “Wind Beneath My Wings” on Wednesday, and he celebrated beating him by singing Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” in the ring to his wife, Paris, who is expecting their third child.
The buildup to the bout had been dominated by Fury’s antics and trash-talking, as well as disputes over the gloves, canvas and finally the hand-wrapping before the fight. The next will likely be more of the same, with a lucrative payout for the participants.
“The interest in the next fight will be crazy,” said Klitschko’s older brother Vitali, the former WBC champion. “We know Wladimir’s potential and that’s the question: In a rematch, do we see him back in his old form or that today was no accident? Only he can answer this question. I’ll just say that we didn’t see much of Wladimir’s potential (against Fury).”
Klitschko dropped to 64-4 with 53 knockouts after contesting his 28th title fight. Time is not on his side, with his 40th birthday coming up in four months. Fury, on the other hand, is only likely to improve.
“I’m a fighter, so I will take on all challengers. I want to be a great champion. So I could do it all again. I came here tonight, took the world titles, so whatever happens next is a blessing,” said Fury.
“It’s a very great honor for me to be sat here, champion of the world four times over. It’s not come easy. Twenty-five fights now, three world title eliminators, so I earned my right to be here. I wasn’t given anything for free,” Fury said. “Everybody wrote us off, said we had no chance … we all believed we could do it, we came here and we done it.”
Fury was scornful when asked about a potential bout with Deontay Wilder to unify the four major titles. The American holds the WBC title that was vacated by Vitali Klitschko to concentrate on politics in 2013. The older Klitschko is the current mayor of Kiev.
“Can you not count? I’ve got four,” Fury said as he counted the belts. Then: “Why do we need to mention Deontay Wilder? Let’s have a laugh at his name, shall we?”
But Fury was keen to pay tribute to Klitschko, before verbally punching Wilder again.
“This man has been on top for so long, he’s reigned as champion of the world for the longest,” Fury said. “If Deontay Wilder wants a unification fight, he’s going to have to wait, because Wladimir Klitschko has a round two — ding ding ding!”