As a number of people suspected was the case all along, heavyweight champ Tyson Fury was merely messing around when he claimed he was floored three times in sparring this week and was on the verge of splitting with his uncle and long-time trainer Peter Fury. Ever the practical joker, the unpredictable 27-year-old announced on social media how he was decked and generally beaten up by a Belgian light-heavyweight fighter brought in for speed work ahead of his July 9 return meeting with Wladimir Klitschko.
Fans, some of them anyway, felt no need to worry about the so-called tough sparring; pointing to the fact that plenty of fighters have failed to look a million dollars in sparring (see The Greatest, Muhammad Ali, who often took quite a hammering in sparring for a big fight, only to kick ass on the night of the real fight). However, the things Fury said about his falling out with Peter – possibly the only man capable of bringing out the best of Tyson and of getting him sufficiently motivated and in an ultra-serious frame of mind – did cause a slight flutter of panic among the Fury faithful.
Fury spoke to Sky Sports about how Peter had walked out of camp in disgust at how lacking in motivation his charge was, his head all over the place. Fury even spoke about the possibility of needing to look for a new trainer. Rest assured: this too was all just tomfoolery on the part of Tyson, who is in fact training hard, is fully focused, and is showing a leaner and tighter physique.
Fury, who seemingly cannot stay off social media for too long, today posted a photo of himself and revealed how he has simply been fooling people with his tales of woe. Looking a different person to the out of shape, overweight disgrace that showed up at a Manchester press conference less than a month ago, Fury actually has a trace of abdominal muscle on show in the pic. Fury says he has lost over 10kg and that he has never before felt so on course for any fight with two months to go (there is exactly seven weeks to go on Saturday until the big rematch).
Klitschko, then, if he even heard about the apparent shambles Fury’s camp was in, will now know that any hopes he may have got from this were false hopes. Fury is all business as he trains for the return, which is how we expect it to be with a peaking heavyweight champ. Still, will the effort at losing around 45-pounds or maybe more have an effect on Fury in the later rounds in July? Who knows.
No-one ever knows with Fury, and maybe he doesn’t even know himself what he will do come fight night. Fury will have to go some to be able to fool people with his next practical joke though.
