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Inside Tyson Fury’s ‘retirement’ as he says farewell to boxing once more – however is that this it?

The best way to get someone to pay you to come out of retirement is to go into retirement.

Whether this is a negotiating tactic for the Anthony Joshua fight, an outburst of anger at someone or something or, in actual fact, the end of a great fighter we will have to wait and see. But this is just another day in the world of Tyson Fury.

If Fury is happy and content then by all means sail off into the sunset. Boxing is a dangerous game and to nick one of Frank Warren’s lines from a recent Daily Star column, there’s no point having loads of money in the bank if you can’t remember what street the bank is on.

There’s too many former fighters left penniless and with little memory of the greatness they’ve achieved in the ring. You just need to ask Dave Harris, one of the volunteers trying to build a care home for former fighters who have fallen on hard times.

So to be clear, this isn’t criticising Fury’s decision to retire. If he actually has retired. Hang up ’em when you got millions earned and your wits about you.



Beating Klitschko was Fury's greatest night
Beating Klitschko was Fury’s greatest night

Yet there is just the touch of the boy who cried wolf about Fury. That’s a shame. Because when he does retire, there should be great obituaries written about his very successful and storied career.

A two-time heavyweight champion, the battle back from a drugs ban and mental health crisis, the extraordinary third fight with Deontay Wilder and the upset of Wladimir Klitschko. WBA, IBF, WBO, WBC, European, British, Commonwealth and English champion. He often jokes about the only belt in boxing he’s missing is the Central Area title. The one that got away. It has been some ride. So far.

There’s been ups, downs, highs and lows and they should be documented but you won’t see that in the next days and weeks. Because everyone expects him to return in the summer. He most likely will, too.



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Fury decided on Monday morning after having a coffee to retire from boxing. He had mentioned it to nobody. Sometimes those decisions stick. Maybe this one will but it doesn’t exactly feel like it was well thought out and considered?

Fury has given this reporter some incredible experiences travelling the world covering his fights and some unbelievably difficult situations writing and getting to the bottom of battles outside of the ring with drug use and mental health issues. It also gives me a little – emphasis on little – insight into his thought process.

Not long after he beat Klitschko in 2015, a few journalists were invited to Morecambe to interview him after he was presented with The Ring Magazine belt. He sat on one table with the national papers and told us that Middle Eastern businessmen had put forward an offer for the rematch with Klitschko to be staged on an exclusive yacht or cruise ship with extortionate ticket prices.

We scuttled away with the quotes in our dictaphones and notepads to file them for the next day’s newspapers. Delighted we were. Foolish we would look.

While Fury simply got up from the table, walked five feet and sat down with Mike Costello, who was then working for BBC Radio 5 Live, and told him that he was retiring from the sport. That interview went out at 6am the next day. While our newspapers were already on the stands in the shops.

There’s a very strong chance that both interviews were the truth. There may have well been an audacious offer from the Middle East an, when Fury sat with Costello not five minutes after us, he may have decided to retire.



Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk
The end? Fury lost twice to Oleksandr Usyk

That has been Fury’s career. Class in the ring, contradictions outside of it. Warren rightly argues that he is a man who suffers from serious mental health issues so this is understandable behaviour.

That’s why retirement statements are common in Fury’s career. It’s four or five times now. The last before Monday was when he beat Dillian Whyte in 2022.

Some have motives. This one feels like it is a bid to get even more money for a Joshua fight in the summer. But some are just the whims of a man who has been troubled throughout his career as sporting geniuses so often are.

One day he will actually retire and the sad thing is nobody will believe him. Whether this is the one day, we wait and see.