Tyson Fury is sitting pretty. The arc of his redemption from bad boy to hero with global support is almost complete. Not even the owner of a heavyweight world title belt, the Lancastrian has a five-fight contract with US broadcast giant ESPN worth £80million and his face up in lights on the Las Vegas strip.
He is under the aegis in the US of a promoter in Bob Arum who oversaw the very best from Muhammad Ali through Marvin Hagler to Manny Pacquiao, allied with the promotional nous in the UK of Frank Warren, and being fed opposition way below his level.
The fanfare starts today for another “Gypsy King Fight Week” in Las Vegas. Sept 14 is the most lucrative of pay-per-view fight nights, it being Mexican Independence Day. Floyd Mayweather grossed close to $500million for the Las Vegas economy fighting five times on that date between 2009 and 2015.
Fury has taken star billing in America – with his size 15 feet and 6ft 9in frame, he is agiant in the US sporting landscape after just two headline contests there.
Ensconced in a six-bedroom mansion on the outskirts of Sin City for the past month, training hard under twentysomething coach Ben Davison, Fury is under the least pressure of all the contenders in the blue riband division.
He ought to dispatch Sweden’s Otto Wallin with the same authority he did Germany’s Tom Schwarz in two rounds in June. This will mean that, in 2019, Fury will have earned an estimated £16million for defeating the world No46 and No56 heavyweights. Great work if you can get it.
The arc of Fury’s redemption from bad boy of British boxing to a new hero with a diaspora of support spreading ever more globally seems to be almost complete.
It began with a 10-stone weight loss from a mammoth 28 stone, and a very public return from mental illness after two years in the wilderness, and was followed by an impossible-to-script comeback in a world title challenge against Deontay Wilder for the World Boxing Council heavyweight crown.
When Fury was seemingly knocked out in the 12th round, there appeared no coming back. Yet he produced one of boxing’s most dramatic denouements in acontroversially drawn fight which clearly should have been awarded to Fury.
Yet more than that, Fury was redeemed… by fans and the sports world. And from that moment, he has been considered by most boxing fans, and by The Ring Magazine – “the bible of boxing” – as the No1 heavyweight in the world. The people’s champion.
His rivals are under far more pressure. Wilder is yet to announce an autumn opponent ahead of his expected rematch with Fury next February.
Anthony Joshua has a boom or bust, heavilycriticised fight in Saudi Arabia in December against Andy Ruiz Jnr, who knocked him down four times at Madison Square Garden in June.
Speaking to Fury as he relaxed in his mansion on the southern edges of Las Vegas late on Monday night after his final workout at the Top Rank Gym off Dean Martin Drive, he was as calm as when he turned up for his first professional fight with a mop of curly dark ringlets on the undercard of Carl Froch’s monumental war with Jean Pascal in 2008 in Nottingham. I got the sense that he really feels like the king of the heavyweight division.