TYSON FURY floated his retirement in a way that perhaps only he can, detonating a tweet that bid farewell, signing off with “go suck a d***”.
Fury, the WBO and WBA heavyweight champion, had already pulled out of a rematch with Wladimir Klitscho, scheduled for the end of this month.
Frank Warren, whose channel BoxNation would have televised that fight, revealed that Fury has “walked away from millions of pounds”.
“It’s all very disappointing. BoxNation has invested millions of pounds in his fights and career. He’s obviously got mental issues,” Warren said. “It’s a shame for him and I want to see him get that right. When you do sit him down, he speaks sensibly. This off-the-wall stuff, it’s like a self-destruct button he’s got. He’s an X Factor in reverse. When you look at what he’s done, it amazes me. This guy won the world title, for me the most outstanding performance of a boxer last year to go into the other guy’s backyard, who’d been a world champion for 11 years, take his title away and then not fight again [that] is crazy.”
Fury was at the heart of a revitalised heavyweight division. Not only did he stand to earn a fortune from the Klitschko rematch but lucrative bouts with Anthony Joshua or Deontay Wilder also beckoned. “His legacy is he beat the best heavyweight in the world,” Warren said.
“He walked away from millions, many millions of pounds,” Frank continued. “There’s some great fights to be made and he walked away and he is the best one out of all them and I believe he would have beaten all of them.”
It’s also wounding for BoxNation because Fury-Klitschko would have been the first fight broadcast with their new pay-per-view option, BoxNation Box Office.
“Unfortunately for us it was our first one and we worked very hard to be able to deliver to Sky subscribers the opportunity to go on BoxNation Box Office and watch a great fight. A lot of work, a lot of time by everybody put into it,” Warren said. “That’s twice it’s happened. The last three months we’ve missed out on two big shows, which obviously has a detrimental effect to the channel and our business.”
Frank added, “I know Peter Fury, his uncle, really works hard and I’m sure his dad does. I think it’s him. At the end of the day, we’re all responsible for our own actions and he sits there and he does his twitter and he sends these stupid photographs that he sent out last weekend and it’s madness.”
An allegation emerged that Fury had tested positive for cocaine ahead of what would have been his first title defence. Tyson’s only comment on that was to tweet a picture of his face photoshopped on to Tony Montana from the film Scarface, sat in front of a mound of cocaine. Whether it was laughing at the allegation or laughing it off was unclear.
“All he’s doing is harming himself, it’s like self-harm. For me I just feel it’s a waste of talent but what can you do? You can’t keep making excuses for it. It is what it is,” Warren reflected.
“I don’t know him really that well but nothing surprises me. Well, it does because [you think] why has he done that? There are issues. A lot of people are affected by it and you can’t mess people around. People have put their money up, their time into this and obviously his health must come before all of that. But you can’t keep doing this. He can’t keep doing this to himself and his family and he can’t keep doing it to the sport and I think if he’s retired, he’s retired.”
Fury has subsequently issued a tweet to say: “Ha, ha you think you will get rid of the Gypsy King that easy! I’m here to stay.”
Warren did note, “I don’t understand this at all but there are mental issues. He has problems and he can’t fight. If you’re not right, you can’t fight… But don’t waste everybody’s time.”
