Behind the Mask Page 2

  I was a shy, quiet character growing up and just like a lot of kids in sport I used to get nervous when I was starting out in my amateur days. I had a fear of losing as an amateur because I wanted to succeed so badly. But then when I started professional boxing I thought that if I was going to get attention I had to shout my mouth off, because being myself wouldn’t work. So I started playing this part when the cameras would roll, being arrogant and cocky. This mask would go on and I eventually lost myself in this character, because it was what people expected of me, and I suppose that can happen in all walks of life. You can feel like you have to try and be something you’re not because of the pressure society puts on you. And this is a big factor in the development of mental health problems. I’ve realised that I have to be me, no matter what.

  I’ve had to get behind the mask.

  CHAPTER ONE

  King for a Day

  In June 2010 I boarded a plane for a trip that was longer than I had anticipated and, unknown to me at the time, would set me on the path to defeating Wladimir Klitschko, one of the most dominant world heavyweight champions in the history of boxing. It was also the start of a journey that would derail my life in the most torturous way.

  At this point in my career I had lifted my first professional belt, the English heavyweight title. At home I had become a father to our first child, Venezuela, who was a year old. In and outside the ring, things were relatively good because I was fighting regularly and starting to make a name for myself, although my personal demons were never far away.

  My personality has always been one of acting instinctively. If I feel I need to do something, I do it. So one day I walked into a travel agent and booked a flight from Manchester airport. Detroit was my destination and the man I was going to see was the late, legendary boxing trainer Emanuel Steward – Manny as he is known. His list of fighters matches any of the great boxing coaches down through the decades. He trained a total of forty-one world champions, including legends of the ring Thomas Hearns, Lennox Lewis and the man who was always my number one target, the long-time undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko.

  Manny was a good amateur boxer – he had a record of ninety-four wins and only three defeats, and he won a national Golden Gloves title in 1963 – but it was as a trainer at the famous old Kronk gym in Detroit that he shone so brightly. His legendary status was long set in stone by the time he took an interest in me, looking across the pond and eager to have a chat. Manny had actually called my dad, John, a year earlier, in 2009, expressing his desire that I come over and see him because he believed that I could be the next heavyweight champion of the world.

  That was a very bold statement, and the invitation was naturally very tempting, but I said no because the time wasn’t right. My wife, Paris, was pregnant with Venezuela and it just didn’t suit me to make such a huge move, even though I felt honoured and excited by the fact that Manny Steward was wanting to meet me, a twenty-two-year-old unbeaten but raw professional. However, one day I just thought, if I don’t go to Detroit and see him I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, so somehow I had to make it happen. This wasn’t just any old trainer wanting to work with me, it was a legend of the sport. So I booked the flight, grabbed a bag and told Paris I was off to the States. That’s the way I am, I have that impulsive nature.

  I did try to contact Manny on the phone, as well as my cousin, Andy Lee, from Limerick, who was there training in his gym. But I couldn’t get hold of either of them. Manny was very busy with his television commentary work with American channel HBO. So I just got on the plane, on my own with no address for him, and when I arrived at Detroit airport I told the taxi driver to take me to the Kronk gym. When we arrived at what we believed was the gym, the place had closed down, but fortunately the driver found the right address and we eventually got there.

  When I walked in I was the only white guy in the place, and standing so tall I stood out a bit. I went up to one of the trainers and asked, ‘Where can I find Manny?’ He asked me who I was and I told him, ‘I’m Tyson Fury, the future heavyweight champion of the world.’ When it came to boxing and what I could do in the ring I never lacked confidence. So, the guy rings Manny and says, ‘There’s a crazy white kid down here says he wants to meet you, says he’s going to be the next heavyweight champ of the world.’ Manny asked him what my name was, and then he got the guy to bring me straight to his house. He was as shocked to see me as the whole gym was when they saw this big heavyweight with the funny English accent talking a big game. It’s a funny thing, but I was so confident in my ability and yet away from that arena I could find myself being happy one minute and the next slipping into a very dark place. It just felt like the bigger the high, the deeper the low. That was the cycle I was in, so with every bit of success there would be a price to pay. This was my life and I didn’t know why.

  As soon as Manny and I met we clicked. I was supposed to be there for two weeks and I stayed for a month. He took me back to his house and I stayed there with him; he even bought me a special extra-large bed to sleep in. He treated me and talked to me like I was a world champion already and told me I was one of the top three personalities he’d ever seen in boxing – Muhammad Ali and Prince Naseem Hamed being the other two. He worked a lot on my balance and my jab and in those four weeks I was like a sponge soaking everything in. What he taught me has stayed with me for the rest of my career. He wasn’t just a boxing trainer, he was a real teacher and you don’t get many of them today. He took an interest in me personally and was keen to pass on as much knowledge as possible about the art of boxing.

  It was without doubt one of the best times of my life, particularly with my cousin Andy there as well. He had been with Manny from the start of his professional career and would go on to become WBO middleweight champion. We’d go out with Manny to these bars at the weekend and Manny – who everybody in Detroit knew – would stand up and introduce me as the next heavyweight champion of the world. I’d then grab the microphone and give them a few songs and the Americans loved it.

  In the Kronk gym I quickly made an impression. This big Australian cruiserweight kept asking me to spar with him and Manny told him no, because I was too big, but the guy insisted. When we finally did get in the ring I put him down with a jab twice and we had to end the spar shortly after that because it was so one-sided. I was on fire and so was Andy in sparring, and one day all you could hear from one of the veteran trainers was, ‘Man, I can’t believe it. White boys taking over Kronk! White boys taking over Kronk!’

  The way I moved, the rhythm I had and the way I handled myself, the experienced trainers in the gym were really surprised because they viewed most European heavyweights as quite robotic in the way they boxed. The big men in the sport don’t normally move the way I do. I stand out because of my movement and hand-speed. Like a diamond in the rough, and they couldn’t take their eyes off me. They had expected me to walk in flat-footed, hands held high, marching forward, just another big people-carrier off the conveyor belt, but instead they were looking at a Ferrari.

  The old men in the gym said I was boxing more like an American – with an American’s mentality. I was backing up the claim I made when I arrived at the gym that I was the future of boxing. I could see that the guys who had been around the gym with Manny for a long time were shocked at what they were witnessing because very few heavyweights can do what I can in the ring, with my natural athleticism and fast hands. They were loving watching me every day and I could sense just how beneficial the whole experience was and the positivity from experienced boxing men was palpable. There was no sense of anxiety, no opportunity for the darkness to descend on my mind because I was learning more about the sport I had always loved, learning from the best and feeding off the reactions of those watching me.

  I was really tempted to stay there. I was in one of the most famous boxing gyms in the world and every day catching the eye, putting on a show and then going out to the local bars and entertain
ing the fellas with my singing in the evenings. I was improving so much. In terms of my development it may have made sense to stay, but I had to get back home to Paris and the family because they were always my number one priority. Manny loved working with me and he actually bought me a pair of beautiful boxing boots, which I would go on to wear the momentous night of my heavyweight title match five years later in Germany.

  After a great experience I had to say goodbye to Manny and the Kronk gym. However, four weeks later, I got a call from Manny asking me to come to Austria to be part of Wladimir Klitschko’s training camp for his world heavyweight title defence against Londoner Dereck Chisora. I jumped at the chance to be part of that camp – to see what Klitschko was like up close and personal and to have the opportunity of working with Manny again. What I didn’t know when I accepted the offer was how Manny was about to lay even more groundwork for me to one day triumph over Klitschko.

  We were in the gym one session and Manny pointed to me and said it loud and clear – ‘Tyson is going to become the next dominant heavyweight champion of the world.’ Wladimir didn’t like it one bit and I could see it in his face. He was in the ring sparring and having a tough time, and Manny said, ‘I better not let Tyson Fury in here cos he’d knock your ass out.’ Manny actually called me at 3 a.m. after that sparring session to ask my thoughts on how Wladimir was looking because he valued my opinion on fighters. I was very honest and told him I went to Austria expecting to meet Superman but he just looked like another man with a pair of gloves on; there was nothing special to see at all. Clearly, Manny was worried that Klitschko was going to pull out of the fight with Chisora because he wasn’t looking that sharp at all. In the end, that’s exactly what happened, but it wasn’t before I got into Klitschko’s head even more.

  About twenty of us (and my cousin Andy can verify this) went down to the sauna and an old American trainer who worked with Wladimir said to me, ‘You know Wladimir is the Sauna King, so show some respect. He likes to leave last after everybody else has gone.’

  Well, that was music to my ears because nobody loves a challenge more than me and I knew it was a perfect moment to wind up big Wlad. So we go in, I’m as fat as a pig and it’s the hottest sauna that I’ve ever experienced, with a big fire in the middle of it. We’re all there naked and they give you this stuff that looks like chocolate sauce to pour over yourself. One by one they all get out, to the point where it’s just me and Wladimir sitting there. We were only meant to be in there for twenty minutes but then he gets up and turns the clock back to go for another twenty minutes and I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to die here.’ But I wasn’t going to let him beat me. I thought, ‘If I pass out, they can throw some water on me and I’ll be all right.’ So I count down the time in my head to keep me focused and then five minutes later Wladimir gets up and walks out in a huff. I thought, great, and stayed in for another ten minutes and when I came out I nearly fainted. The old American trainer who I had spoken to before I went in was still there and he said to me, ‘What did you say to Wladimir?’ I just looked at him, took in a gulp of air and said, ‘Now I’m the Sauna King.’

  That’s how I knew I would beat Wladimir; he knew that I wouldn’t give in to him. Throughout all his camps he would stare at sparring partners, looking to intimidate them. He was big into psychology because he knew there was a good chance that down the line he would face those guys and they would be beaten before the first bell would ring because they would have demons in their head from what had happened in the training camps with him. But he couldn’t do that to me. He would stare at me in the gym and I’d shout across, ‘Have you got a problem?’

  I could see that his weakness was that he needed to be in control of everything. We both left that camp knowing he couldn’t intimidate me. And we both knew the same thing five years later when the moment finally came to fight for his world titles at the Esprit Arena in Düsseldorf in 2015.

  . . .

  It had seemed a long way off, but Klitschko was always the target for me. As I built up my career, winning every title I could – the English, Irish, British, Commonwealth, European and WBO Intercontinental heavyweight titles – I improved my world ranking in pursuit of big Wlad. He was knocking off one challenger after another and his brother Vitali was doing the same. Vitali first won the WBC belt in 2004 and then held it from 2008 to 2013, while Wlad had the other major three belts, the WBA, IBF and WBO. They had the heavyweight scene wrapped up and it was going to take the Gypsy King to bring down their empire. They knew it and they kept me away from the crown jewels for as long as they could, until I made it to the position of mandatory challenger and my chance came in 2015.

  But as my professional career was in the ascendancy and as I approached the biggest fight of my life, there was tragedy at home that had to be suppressed until I fulfilled my dream. The nightmare could come later.

  My uncle Hughie, who had coached me in the early part of my career, died in October 2014 after a freak accident. He was moving a caravan when the drawbar fell on him and broke his leg. He then suffered a clot, which travelled to his lung and he suffered a cardiac arrest. He lay in a coma for eleven weeks after the accident and during the early part of that period I found myself not only visiting him in hospital but also having to rush my wife Paris into the same hospital, Wythenshawe in Manchester. Paris was around six months pregnant at the time and we had received the heart-breaking news that the baby had died. Because the little one was so developed, Paris had to go into hospital to have the baby delivered.

  Words cannot describe how terrible a time it was for everyone in the family. I was in one part of the hospital with Paris as she had to give birth to our child who had died, and in another ward Uncle Hughie was in an induced coma. I went from one side of the hospital to the other, just to check on my uncle and then back to Paris, who was thankfully allowed home that day.

  The hospital wanted to take the baby off us but I told them emphatically no, because that was not in our culture, and that I would be taking him home to bury him. I put him in this little wooden box that I had for a watch, took him up to my dad’s house, and found a nice spot in the garden and buried him there. My dad and my brother Shane were with me. Paris naturally didn’t go because it was all just so traumatic for her. The tears were streaming down my face as we said a few prayers and I laid down a stone to mark his burial place. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It really cut me up and yet at the same time I had to be strong for Paris and think about what was best for her because she was in such a state, as any mother would be at having lost a baby in that way.

  I was supposed to have a fight in July but that was cancelled and to help Paris cope with the whole trauma she had been through I booked us a cruise. We flew to Venice and spent two weeks on a Mediterranean cruise with Shane and his wife, as well as my very good friend Dave Reay and his wife. I just felt it would help but at first Paris was adamant that she didn’t want to go; she was crying a lot and just in despair really. But I managed to persuade her, and while she may not have been in the best form understandably, I think that as the cruise went on it did help her in some way to deal with the grief. It wasn’t the first time we had lost a child, and even more tragically it would not be the last, but it was the most traumatic.

  I had to continue my career, and my quest to face Klitschko, and the only way I could deal with the loss of the baby and of my uncle Hughie was to bottle it all up. I had no time to grieve; all that trauma had to be put to the back of my mind – as if it hadn’t happened – so I could pursue my dream of becoming world champion. It may sound harsh, but it was the only way I could cope and keep my boxing career on the right path.

  . . .

  At the first press conference to officially announce the fight, which was in Germany, I again made it clear that Klitschko wasn’t going to control me the way he had done with all his other opponents. In the second press conference in England, I stole all the limelight when I turned up in a Batman costume,
and even staged a fight with the Joker! I had the room in stitches and on my side. But even in the little things, like when we were getting the photographs taken, Klitschko would be trying to tell me to look this way and that. I just said, ‘I’ll look where I want. I’m beating you and you know it.’

  Manny had sadly passed away in 2012 but his words were still in Wladimir’s mind. He took everything Manny said as gospel and I knew that. Manny’s coaching protégé, Johnathon Banks, was now Wladimir’s trainer so the Kronk influence was still there as we prepared to face each other.

  Psychologically, I knew that I had him, I knew he was unsure of what to expect from me. But I had to be in top physical shape otherwise I had no chance. After all, I was going in against a man who was undefeated in eleven years and had successfully made eighteen world title defences. To the rest of the world I was turning up to be the latest victim at the hands of Dr Steelhammer, as he was known. Virtually nobody outside of my family and team gave me a chance; they just thought Wladimir was a league above me. The vast majority of media, boxing pundits and former champions didn’t give me a hope of being victorious against Klitschko, who at that point had a record of sixty-four wins, three defeats and fifty-three knockouts.

  I had beaten some very tough guys along the way to securing that shot at Klitschko. I had proven myself worthy of this opportunity, with an unbeaten record of twenty-four fights and eighteen knockouts, and yet the bookmakers said I was a 4/1 underdog. The general consensus was probably summed up by former world heavyweight champion David Haye, who told the Guardian newspaper, ‘The best guy on Fury’s record is Dereck Chisora, you look at Klitschko and it is a whole different story. This is Tyson’s first introduction to world heavyweight boxing. He has never fought anyone who is a true world-class fighter. To go from fighting the Chisoras of this world to go in with a strong, healthy dominant world champion, will be a step too far.’