TYSON FURY believes his career-best victory over Wladimir Klitschko on Saturday was as much a psychological triumph as a physical one. Fury’s team spent significant time in the build-up battling against disadvantages he believed he was being forced to endure, but the people around him ensured he would go into the ring only thinking about the contest itself.
“I went down at 12 [midday] to test the ring and it was like walking on a memory foam mattress; I would not have been able to move around as I did if they had not changed it,” Fury told Boxing News. “It was a very naughty trick and if we was wet behind the ears they would have got away with it but my uncle Peter [also his trainer] is too smart for that. There’s no pulling the wool over our eyes. There was the problem with the gloves [Fury was unhappy with the original selection], then the canvas and then they wrapped his hands before we were even watching him, so we made him do them again.”
Klitschko unwrapped his hands and then went through the process once more, in front of a member of Team Fury – as per the rules – while Tyson had to do the same thing before a special part of the Klitschko entourage, the champion’s brother Vitali Klitschko.
“I tortured Vitali in my room when he was watching my hands being wrapped,” Tyson recalled. “I was saying, ‘I want you, sucker. Put kisses on my bandages’, but he went one better and drew love hearts. I told him, ‘I want you next,’ and he said, ‘You better have your excuses ready for the press conference,’ but I didn’t need any.
“Wladimir had to take his high heels off as well! When we were face to face at the weigh-in, he looked the same height as me, but when he took his shoes off to get on the scales he looked six inches shorter, and appeared much shorter on the night. I think the scales were wrong too, because I was actually 256lbs. I haven’t been near 247lbs since 2012. It was all mind games, but the ‘doctor of psychology’ had already lost those to the gypsy warrior.”
