Tyson Fury retires … again! By Tom Gray
“Yes, but The Ring Magazine championship has always been the holy grail of boxing,” Fury told me during a telephone call one Saturday afternoon. “They’ve always been fantastic with me and I’ve always carried that title with pride. “I’ve done well out of boxing. The world is open to so many things now. I’m doing a Netflix documentary at the moment. I’m going to be recording an album soon. Who knows, you might see me on the silver screen.” Of course, when Usyk repeated his points triumph over “AJ” to add the vacant Ring championship to his growing collection, Fury put Hollywood on the back burner and vowed a fistic takeover. He’d been granted a short window of time by the WBC in case he changed his mind about relinquishing its title, and he now elected to keep it. “I got bored with retirement,” Fury told me when I called him for the second time in two weeks. “I had five months out the ring and I changed my mind. Nobody believed me anyway, did they? I would still have passed a lie detector test, though, for sure. “I vacated the Ring title and I’ll now become a three-time Ring champion.” Again, shrewd! Fury wanted to match Muhammad Ali’s accomplishment of being the only other three-time Ring Magazine heavyweight champion. Following a routine stoppage win over old foe Derek Chisora and an embarrassingly close points victory over boxing neophyte Francis Ngannou, Fury got his chance to become undisputed king. Unfortunately, the great Usyk had other ideas and claimed two decision victories over his nemesis in 2024. Regardless of whether Fury sticks to his retirement guns this time or comes back for a money-spinning U.K. shootout with Joshua, he’s been a great fighter, and his accomplishments have been stellar. The Gypsy King will swagger into the Hall of Fame in Canastota the first time he appears on the ballot, and rightly so. With all that said, if he’s returned to the sport by the time this article is published, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Who would?
“Hi, everybody. I’m going to make this short and sweet: I would like to announce my retirement from boxing.” So stated Tyson Fury via Instagram on Monday, January 13, 2025, three weeks after his second loss to reigning unified heavyweight champ Oleksandr Usyk. “It’s been a blast. I’ve loved every single minute of it. And I’m going to end with this … Dick Turpin wore a mask. God bless everybody, see you on the other side. Get up!” First things first, Dick Turpin was an 18th-century English criminal notorious for robbing people at gunpoint while wearing a mask. The most popular theory among boxing insiders is that Fury mentioned Turpin because he believes he was robbed in both of his decision losses to Usyk. The Turpin stuff is new, but the retirement announcement has been part of The Gypsy King’s vernacular for almost a decade, so you can forgive us for being just a little skeptical of his sincerity. Following Fury’s epic points triumph over long-reigning champion Wladimir Klitschko in November 2015, the Manchester man struggled badly with his mental health. He would also fail a VADA test, which turned up a compound found in cocaine, that subsequently nixed an October 2016 rematch with Klitschko. “Boxing is the saddest thing I ever took part in, all a pile of shit, I’m the greatest, & I’m also retired,” said Fury via Twitter (now X) in response. A few hours later, with his “retirement” now viral, Fury retracted the announcement. “Hahahaha u think you will get rid of the GYPSYKING that easy!!! I’m here to stay. #TheGreatest just shows u what the
Medea [sic] are like. Tut tut.” And so began Fury’s love affair with hanging up the gloves. He would battle with his weight, which peaked at almost 400 pounds, and slug it out with UKAD over the revelation that he’d failed another drug test (nandrolone) following a stoppage win over German fighter Christian Hammer in February 2015. Fury, who denied any wrongdoing, ultimately served a backdated suspension and returned to action in June 2018. A hard-hitting trilogy with American knockout artist Deontay Wilder made Fury a two-time heavyweight champion and a global superstar. He also became an advocate for mental health, and his fame and following grew and grew. The Covid pandemic dulled his ring momentum, but a super-hyped showdown with Dillian Whyte saw 94,000 fans fill Wembley Stadium in April 2022. Looking on from ringside, I watched Fury remove Whyte from his senses with a spectacular right uppercut in Round 6. In excellent form and having rubber-stamped his status as the No. 1 heavyweight on the planet, it therefore came as a surprise when the champ announced his retirement … again. “Is that final?” I asked Fury at the post-fight press conference. “I definitely think so,” he said. Understandably, there were one or two groans in the media room at that response. Not for the first time, Fury, as shrewd a man as one could ever meet in boxing, was playing games. However, in August 2022, less than two weeks out from the Oleksandr Usyk- Anthony Joshua rematch, Fury informed the WBC that he would be giving up his title. At that time, he was also the Ring champion, so I was quickly assigned the task of finding out if The Gypsy King was willing to abdicate that throne.
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