Behind the Mask Page 16

  My brother Shane ran into the ring and his eyes filled up with tears. He hugged Ben in delight and I could see how much it meant to them that we had completed our mission. It never crossed our minds that the decision could be anything other than a win for me. I think even Wilder’s own team knew that they were beaten. His trainer Mark Breland seemed to leave the arena before the verdict was announced, and Lou DiBella, a key member of Wilder’s team, came into the ring and told me that I had won the fight. But somehow the Mexican judge Alejandro Rochin scored the fight 115–111 to Wilder. Canada’s Robert Tapper had it 114–112 for me and then, of all people, the British judge Phil Edwards ruled it 113–113 and so the fight was declared a draw. Everybody at ringside was shaking their heads in disbelief. The crowd reacted with a chorus of boos. The respected analyst and former world champion Paulie Malignaggi insisted I won by nine rounds to three; Floyd Mayweather pointed to me as the winner.

  I was the winner but the record books will say that I drew with Deontay Wilder. Ben was naturally fuming; I’ve never seen him so angry. He thought I had been robbed of a glorious moment that could never be repeated and he was in a rage. But I knew that I had to keep my cool. I knew that I had to take the decision with good grace, otherwise there was a genuine threat of a riot because emotions were running high. How one judge scored it for Wilder and another judged it as a draw, I will never know. After all I’d been through, part of me couldn’t believe that I had been robbed in America like this. One man who had predicted a draw was the former undisputed world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, who was at the fight working for television. He had suffered his own highly controversial draw in 1999 when fighting Evander Holyfield for the undisputed title at Madison Square Garden. Most believed he was a clear winner and he would eventually win the rematch. For some reason he felt the same thing was going to happen to me in LA. ‘Tyson Fury won the fight,’ said Lennox, before stating that I was ‘miles clear’ on his card.

  But, you know, the draw was meant to be. I got more credit for the draw than if I had won. People will remember that moment of me getting off the canvas in the twelfth round in the Staples Center for as long as boxers put on gloves. The fact is that was Wilder’s chance to beat me; that was the chance for any boxer to beat me because I had been out for so long and I came back with two easy fights.

  A year on from weighing about 28 stone I was fighting the fearsome WBC heavyweight champion … I was beating him, then I got put down with his best shots, and I still got back up. That fight was a message to anyone who has their individual struggles. It was a beacon of hope for those who feel that their inner demons have them by the throat. It demonstrated what is possible, even when you have hit rock bottom. What unfolded that night in LA was the biggest victory ever seen in a draw.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Family Values

  Walking into the packed press conference in the Los Angeles Staples Center after our epic encounter, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment and of fulfilment. Together, Deontay Wilder and I had shown everyone, without a shadow of a doubt, that we were the top two heavyweights in the world. The heavyweight division hadn’t seen a night like that for years, so it was appropriate that when I stepped up to face the media I spread my arms out wide like Russell Crowe in the movie Gladiator and roared, ‘Are you not entertained?’ This brought a great response from the room, and it was clear from the questions just how much the members of the press had appreciated my performance, and to a man they believed I was the victor.

  I had really enjoyed the twelve-round battle. Wilder proved that he’s a good fighter but if he is honest with himself, he should tell the truth and admit that I won the fight. But he can’t admit it to himself that I won. Everybody knows what happened; they know the truth. Never mind not being able to finish me off in the twelfth round, even in round nine he had two minutes and thirty seconds to finish me when I was a wounded animal and he couldn’t do it. The Gypsy King was on top of the heavyweight scene once more.

  Wilder actually refused to come to the press conference after the fight. Instead he wanted his own press conference, and I think that was because, as a fighting man, you know when you’ve lost – and he knew he had been beaten. He knew that in front of me he couldn’t make any excuses, but without me there he could say what he wanted and he would not be challenged, and that’s what he did.

  Interestingly, ever since the fight there has been no contact between Wilder and me. Before the fight we were texting back and forth, good and bad stuff, lots of amusing banter. But afterwards he went silent. I even texted him after Anthony Joshua had turned down a huge sum of money to face him, and told Wilder that if he offered me the fight, I wouldn’t turn it down. Three weeks after that night in Los Angeles I texted him to wish him a merry Christmas, saying, ‘All the best champ and let’s get this rematch done.’ He didn’t respond.

  Wilder did admit at his own press conference that he couldn’t believe that I got up in the twelfth round because he couldn’t have hit me any harder. Well, they do say you can’t go swimming without getting wet. And I got drenched! Still, I left the press conference, after leading a rendition of ‘American Pie’, with a sense of accomplishment. By the time we all got back to the hotel I just wanted to go to bed. All the effort and emotion of the fight hit me and I crashed out. The next morning I chatted with a few friends and then headed to the airport to fly home.

  Obviously, part of me was disappointed with the decision. I still couldn’t believe how anybody could not have scored the fight for me – it was just baffling. But I carried with me a very different emotion going home to the one that I had felt after defeating Wladimir Klitschko. There was no sense of darkness or depression kicking in. If there was a time when I could have fallen back into a black hole then it would have been there and then. I did think to myself that everybody would now be expecting me to drift back into depression after working so hard to drag myself back to the top of the sport, only to be robbed at the moment of triumph. But because I was now an ambassador for mental health I was determined to prove that no matter how many times you can be put down in life, no matter how you have been hurt or how badly you have been treated, you must continue to fight back and you can overcome the worst that life can throw at you.

  As a point of contrast, before the Klitschko fight I was asked what I would do after I won. My response was simple: ‘I will probably be depressed for a very long time.’ I knew the black clouds were coming and there was nothing that I could do about them.

  But now returning home after the Wilder fight my mindset was completely different and my outlook on boxing had changed dramatically. Before, I would have read absolutely everything about the fight – analysing every aspect of it and studying it obsessively. This was because back then I had put my heart and soul into boxing. It wasn’t a job, it was my life, and because of that, when I had gone through my dark days, it was as if a part of me had died when I didn’t box. But now, I saw boxing for what it was, it was my job – it was how I earned money to feed my family and to pay my bills. It was not personal any more between me and other people in boxing. Before, a promoter could have said something about me and I would have got right on to Twitter to have a real go back. But now I didn’t really care because I knew it was their job to promote their fighters. Now I understood it as business.

  Social media can be such a tidal wave of negativity and I know now that it’s not good for me to be near it. I’ve overcome a big hurdle in my life and I don’t need to be part of that world, which brings a lot of people down and leads them to judge themselves against other people. It can be horrible and I’ve no doubt that it is a major contributory factor in leading people to have serious mental health issues. When I look back at some of the photos and the interviews and some of the things that I said back then when I was ill, I know that a person who was well wouldn’t have acted like that. So my advice to someone who is ill around you? If they do outrageous things, you shouldn’t think that their behaviour
is embarrassing – they probably need professional help. My family had originally looked at me and wondered what there was for me to have been sad about, and they were like ‘pull yourself together’. But that was probably one of the worst things that they could have said to me. It wasn’t their fault, but they’ve since learned to have a much better understanding of what mental health is all about.

  As I got off the plane back on home soil, my dad was there to meet me. After embracing me and telling me how proud he was of my performance, he insisted that we had to go somewhere before I could go home – straight to the hospital in Liverpool. Dad had been shocked with the way I had got up after being smashed down on to the canvas by those Wilder bombs and he wanted to make sure that I was all right, that everything was fine inside my head. So we went to the hospital and I had an MRI scan. Thankfully everything was OK. But that’s my dad, and that’s a side that the public doesn’t always see of him because he can be so animated when he speaks about me, and about how great a fighter he believes I am. There has always been a deep concern that we’ve held for one another. We have never needed to say a lot to each other; my dad and I just know that when the chips are down we can count on each other. That’s a father–son bond.

  My brothers have been with me along this road, too, and the one who has been the closest to me has been Shane, simply because we are only a year and a half apart in age. Shane is someone who is always concerned; he is eager for me to show my best, and he believes in my ability so much that he wants to see me beat everybody up in each fight and look a million dollars every day. But since my comeback I have learned that I can’t always be on top form. As a fighter you get tired, you get hurt and you get run-down. During the build-up and the training camp for the Wilder fight my brothers accepted this, and helped create a sense of calm and belief for me. They give off a naturally positive vibe. Shane was there for seven weeks of the camp and my younger brother Hughie came in for the last two. I know that during the fight itself, Hughie was an emotional wreck; he could hardly watch, he was praying most of the time. He would look up for a minute and then put his head down. Hughie actually said to me after the fight, ‘That’s enough, just walk away. I can’t take any more. You’ve done it all now, there’s nothing more to prove.’

  Paris was in a worse state and couldn’t get over what she had witnessed that night. She not only told me to retire but she also didn’t feel that she could sit through another fight with me against Wilder. In the immediate aftermath, she felt so ill and when she got back to our hotel room she ripped off her false nails, wiped away her make-up and sat on the bed, crying for three hours. It was horrible to see my wife go through that kind of trauma and I’m sure there are many wives and girlfriends of boxers who can relate to that experience, because they know the fine line between a glorious night in the ring and a tragic one. Through the tears, Paris didn’t hold back: ‘I don’t want you fighting again, Tyson. It’s too hard, it’s not worth it!’

  The emotional roller-coaster that Paris, Hughie and my family went through illustrates how much they care. That’s the depth of love and concern that few others in boxing can really have for a fighter. Everyone else is doing a job and if the fighter loses, well, they just move on to the next show. With regard to the management team and the promoters, if I lose it’s a case of, ‘Oh well, bad luck’ but it’s not the end of the world to them. They move on to the next promotion. But my family, they don’t get any money from it so for them it is everything. It means so much – there’s family pride and love on the line every time I step through the ropes and into the ring.

  With Shane, he had always given it to me straight. He’s not a yes man and I respect that. After the Wilder fight he told me, ‘I don’t make a living off you. I’ve got my own money so I don’t want anything from you.’ If he has something to say about a certain matter, he has always hit me with it. Like my dad and me, Shane and I feel genuine concern for each other. If one of us fell into the sea with no hope of survival, we’d rather jump in and die with each other than accept the reality of no hope. When I think of our relationship today, it really goes back to our childhood. When Shane and I grew up we spent a lot of time with our mother because my dad was a workaholic and would regularly leave the house at seven in the morning and would not return until eleven at night. Dad had a reputation for being a hard man back then and he was tight with his money, so we would always ask my mum instead for pocket money and she would give in, offering us treats and taking us on trips to Blackpool. She was always very supportive but to this day she has never been to one of my fights, either amateur or professional.

  To be honest, my mum doesn’t fully understand what I have achieved as a boxer. I took her out shopping one time after the Wilder fight and I was being stopped for photographs and autographs everywhere I went in Manchester and she couldn’t understand it. She actually said, ‘Hey, son, how do you know so many people?’ I had to explain to her that I was the heavyweight champion of the world and a lot of people had watched me and supported me. That day was actually very special. It was a lovely time that I spent with my mum – just like any son would like to do. I was able to treat her to her favourite perfume and I wanted to buy her a Louis Vuitton bag, but she ended up shouting at me, ‘Don’t be wasting your money on that. Save your money because you never know when you’ll need it!’

  Only a mother would tell off a multimillionaire like that. She was more worried about me than about herself and I guess that’s the way all good mothers are; I’m in awe of them. When I look at my mum, while I am a natural fighting man, I do see some of her character in me as well. I was thinking a lot about this kind of thing after the Wilder fight. How had my family made me the man I was; how did they shape me to succeed in my toughest moment?

  I believe the work ethic I have as a fighter and as a person goes right back to my 89-year-old grandmother Patience. She had never had much money, she’d had a tough life, but she instilled in the hearts and minds of my brothers and me the essence of working. As a young boy I would help her clean and do some jobs for her. She had grown up in London and she used to tell me that even as a teenager she would have been out helping her father with his job tarmacking roads. She showed me old photos and I learned a lot from her; it was very educational how she brought up my father and her other sons. It wasn’t about material gain but about how important it was to graft, and to be ready to fight in life because it could be hard. When your grandmother laid roads as a teenager, I suppose there has to be real grit in your genes! And I’m sure that has helped me in the ring. It’s that same work ethic that I will try to give to my own kids. It would be too easy for them to become lazy and to live off their father, but I know this won’t happen. Their dad won’t be around for ever and they need to have the same work ethic that I do so that they can achieve their own dreams.

  After the Wilder fight, the more I thought about my upbringing, and how it had defined me, the more I realised that there were other family members who had helped me, too – even if I hadn’t realised that they were doing it at the time. I think my work ethic developed further after I spent time as a teenager in Torquay with my aunt Ramona – my mother’s sister – and her husband James, who was a landscaper. I loved going down there because, as they had no children, they would spoil me rotten. I would do the work, picking up rubbish and waste, carrying out some labouring, and then after work I would head to the beach to swim, or to play some cricket. It was a very different lifestyle to what I was used to, but I found it very refreshing and I learned so much. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. Ramona and James taught me to work hard and to appreciate the good things that you are blessed with. James was a man who worked extremely hard but he also had a real style, which I admired, and I like to think that his sense of style rubbed off on me.

  I remember he had this beautiful Bentley and he would wash it every day. He would chamois and polish it, and take great pride in its appear
ance. He also took great pride in his own appearance and I’m definitely the same. To this day I like to stand out in a fine suit and to be well groomed. James always looked smart and was always well-tanned, and that was different to the men I had grown up with, who were a bit more rough and tough and more down-to-earth. I liked the style that James had and I guess it’s down to him that I like to bring some colour to my wardrobe.

  Ramona was an interior designer so she had a great touch in terms of giving a property the wow factor. Ramona and James would go to auctions and I’d join them. As with my dad and his car business when I was growing up, buying and selling was clearly going to be in my blood, and would put me in good stead for selling my fights.

  . . .

  When Christmas 2018 arrived, I had sold my biggest fight of all – the fairy-tale comeback against Deontay Wilder – thanks to all the innate characteristics instilled in me by the various members of my family.

  It was a Christmas to be savoured, the complete opposite of 2015 and the depression that set in after beating Wladimir Klitschko. The real Tyson Fury wasn’t going away this time. The heavyweight division now knew that the King was back and he was here to rule for as long as he wanted.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A New Dawn

  Philadelphia, 2007

  Instinct took over and told me that this was the wrong place, the wrong time. It was my first time in America, and the first – and only – time in my life when I had found myself running away from a fight. But when a 9mm or a switchblade was about to come my way, I think I made the right choice – and it still seems like it was the wise decision.