Tyson Fury laughs off what he perceives as a lack of overall respect for his upset of Wladimir Klitschko.
Fury wasn’t nearly the underdog Andy Ruiz Jr. was when Ruiz stopped Anthony Joshua three months ago at Madison Square Garden. But Klitschko hadn’t lost in 11½ years when England’s Fury out-boxed him to win their 12-round fight heavyweight title fight by unanimous decision in November 2015.
Klitschko, then 39 years old, was a 4-1 favorite over Fury before they met that night in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Their immediate rematch fell apart twice due to Fury’s problems with alcohol, cocaine and depression. Ukraine’s Klitschko eventually returned to the ring to fight Joshua, who floored Klitschko in the fifth round, overcame a sixth-round knockdown and dropped Klitschko twice more in the 11th round, when Joshua stopped the then-41-year-old former champion in April 2017 at a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London.
Fury playfully compared the difference in credit he thinks he and Joshua have been afforded for defeating Klitschko, who has since retired.
“When I fought Wladimir, he was over the hill,” Fury told BT Sport’s Steve Bunce during one of the British network’s preview shows for his fight Saturday night against Otto Wallin. “But then he went in a time machine, two years later, and he fought Joshua, and he’s at his prime. But when he fought ‘The Gypsy King,’ he was an old man.”
When Bunce suggested, “But you made him an old man,” Fury replied, “I did.”
Fury also acknowledged that Klitschko came very close to catching him with one of those vaunted right hands that night, shots that obviously would’ve changed the course of their fight and Fury’s career.
“Very close. Inches away from me old whiskers,” Fury said. “But I don’t believe, on that night, any heavyweight in history would’ve beat me. It was my night. I took punches in that fight, bang on the chin, that I’ve been over on lesser punches. So, it was definitely divine intervention, for sure, because nothing was putting me over. The same shots he knocked 60 victims out with was bouncing off me jaw like [nothing]. I was going nowhere. It’s not like I’ve got a granite chin or nothing, is it? I’ve been put down plenty of times. … I’ve been put down loads of times. It’s easy to put down ‘The Gypsy King,’ isn’t it? ‘Just hit him on the chin and he falls over, with his glass chin.’ Come on!”
The 6-feet-9, 260-pound Fury (28-0-1, 20 KOs) is consistently listed as at least a 25-1 favorite over Wallin (20-0, 13 KOs, 1 NC), who’s untested at the elite level. Their fight will be broadcast by BT Sport in the United Kingdom and streamed by ESPN+ in the United States.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
