John Fury was left with blood dripping from his head after a heated verbal exchange at his son Tyson Fury’s press conference ahead of this weekend’s heavyweight unification title fight with Oleksandr Usyk turned physical. The 59-year-old sustained the injury after an altercation with a member of Usyk’s team.
Tensions were already reaching boiling point before Fury Sr. took a hit, with his son, the Gypsy King, verbally sparring with rival Usyk’s promoter, Alex Krassyuk, on stage. In an IFL TV video, Fury Sr. appears to initiate contact with a headbutt on a member of Usyk’s team and another angle via Nikolay Tkachenko’s Instagram shows the Brit going head-to-head with a man wearing a flat cap, with the pair being pulled apart and chanting can be heard. “We ain’t going nowhere, we don’t go nowhere!” Fury Sr. was reportedly heard saying.
The May 18 fight in Saudi Arabia will see unbeaten heavyweight champions Fury and Usyk meet inside the squared circle after their initial date of Feb. 17 was delayed following the Gypsy King suffering a nasty cut in sparring. Fury, 35, appears to be in his best shape ever with his narrow win over ex-UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou shocking him into life. Ngannou knocked Fury down in the fifth round before Fury went on to win by split decision.
The winner of Saturday’s meeting will become the first man since Lennox Lewis in 1999 to hold all four heavyweight titles. However, Fury has admitted getting his hands on all four belts wasn’t his motivation; money is. “Look, this is an important fight,” Fury told The Telegraph, “but again… I hate to say it, because the boxing fans and the boxing purists and all them ——- don’t want to hear it, but why do you think I box? For the money.
“If anybody in this building, or anybody in professional boxing, tells me they don’t do this game for money, they’re lying to you, and I speak from the heart. I do it for the dough. The bigger the deal, the better. I’m a prize-fighting pugilist specialist, that’s what I do.
“I fight for the prize, whether it be gold bars, gold coins, cash, transfers, cars – whatever you want to pay me, pay me in bags of sand for all I care. As long as I can make a drink on it, deal done.
“This is a good fight, [but] I’m not too concerned about what people are going to be saying in 100 years. The dust from our bones won’t exist in 100 years, never mind what they say about a boxing match in 100 years. We’ll all be dead, my kids will be dead, my wife will be dead, my dad will be dead, anybody I ever cared about will be gone.
“So, I’m going in there to get paid […] and come back to Morecambe Bay. I probably won’t even buy anything, because I don’t need anything. I’ll do a bit of shopping, probably be tighter than I am today. I’ll do the rematch exactly the same.”
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