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  The funny thing is, maybe if Wladimir had not got injured in training, which led to the fight being postponed for four weeks, all those so-called experts could have been right. Instead of meeting him in October, the new date for my moment of truth would be 28 November 2015.

  I had a brutal training camp for the biggest fight of my life. I went into the start of it very unfit. I lost seven stone in eight weeks at our camp in Cannes, France. As usual I had ballooned up between fights. It was a vicious cycle back then that I couldn’t get away from; when I wasn’t fighting for a long period I would get down and eat too much.

  In the build-up to the fight we were training in 33 degrees of heat and to be honest I wasn’t sharp at all. I was feeling drained because of the amount of weight that I had lost and my chances for the fight didn’t look good. But then word came through that Wladimir had asked for a postponement because of injury and I have to admit that I was relieved. Those four weeks gave me the time to get my energy back, put on a little bit of weight and just get into the shape I needed to be in for fight night. Everything was transformed in that time; it was great for me and bad news for Wladimir.

  But despite all the work I had done, and the impact that Manny Steward had on both of us, I will always maintain that I didn’t win the fight against Wladimir, God won it for me. He intervened in so many ways. I don’t believe anything happens by chance when you trust God; this was the plan he had for me and he had put everything in place for me to triumph. Nothing was going to stop me from being victorious on that amazing night – not even my recent traumas that were still weighing heavily on me throughout training.

  When we came together in Düsseldorf for the first official announcement for the new fight date, I made it clear to Klitschko that the young lion had come to finally end the stale, dull reign of the old king. ‘You’ve got about as much charisma as my underpants,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to rid boxing of your boring jab-and-grab style.’

  There were further media commitments before I then continued my training. The next time we met was during fight week. I kept up the mind games, defiantly telling Klitschko that my moment had arrived – the moment that the great Manny Steward had foreseen.

  For me it was extra special that my dad John was able to be at the fight. He had come out of jail in February but still wasn’t allowed out of the country at that point. However, after applying to his probation officer, they granted him a visa to attend the fight, which was such a relief both to him and to me. He made it clear to the media and everyone else just how much this moment was going to mean to him. ‘I’m not long out of jail. It was a long sentence and all I want to do is see my son be victorious here. If I die on Sunday, I’ll die happy because I will have seen what I need to see,’ Dad said during fight week. And then he had his own special moment, an unusual spiritual experience just twenty-four hours before I faced Klitschko.

  Dad would admit to me later that he was feeling super-stressed about the fight and what might go wrong, so much so that he genuinely felt like he was going to have a heart attack. The dark side of boxing, the politics and the behind-the-scenes antics have ruined the dreams of many boxers and he felt that the power of the Klitschkos within the sport meant that somehow I would be denied the chance to realise my dream. It meant so much to my dad that I would be given a fair opportunity to prove I was the better man.

  He was sitting on his bed in his hotel room looking through the blinds in a cold sweat fearing the worst. All of a sudden he could see this light coming through and it illuminated a small cross among the buildings in the distance. He said he just felt all the stress and doubts drain away. He felt transformed; the negative feelings were replaced by positivity, he felt relieved and contented, and he immediately jumped up and came up to my room to see how I was coping. It was the day before the biggest fight of my life but, to his surprise, he opened the door and saw me and my brother Shane dancing and singing on the microphone! I told him I had never felt better and he just told me, ‘You can’t lose. You’re going to be heavyweight champion of the world,’ and he closed the door, leaving us to our X-Factor rehearsals! I can’t imagine Klitschko was that relaxed that night, and he was the champion.

  But there was some more stress to go through before that could happen. On the Saturday afternoon I asked to go down to the stadium to check out the ring. After shadow boxing I got out and told my team that I couldn’t box on that, it was too spongy. My footwork was going to be crucial if I was going to beat Klitschko so I needed a normal canvas that could allow me to move well – and this wasn’t it. I would have been gassed after six rounds because it would have been like boxing on sand. This was the kind of canvas that Klitschko liked; this was the kind that he trained on because he liked to methodically move around the ring. When my uncle and coach Peter checked the canvas there was six inches of thick foam underneath it; it was ridiculous.

  And then everything kicked off between my camp, the Klitschkos, the German boxing federation and the World Boxing Organisation officials. It was a screaming match. They were refusing to change the canvas so at around three o’clock in the afternoon, just seven hours before I was due to fight, we gave them an ultimatum: change it within the hour or there’s no fight. It wasn’t an empty threat. We were ready to get the next flight home because this was just typical of the way the Klitschkos wanted to control every detail.

  The official representing the British Boxing Board of Control agreed that the canvas would not have been passed in the UK but the Klitschko team were digging their heels in until it came to crunch time and it was Wladimir’s brother Vitali who said, ‘Right, just change it.’ So, from being minutes away from heading home, I was now once again having to prepare to win the world heavyweight title – and once again we hadn’t backed down to the Klitschkos like others had in the past.

  We had taken every precaution leading up to the fight. We brought in our own chef even though we were staying in a good hotel, we had bought water from a supermarket five miles down the road, and even after the fight I refused to drink any water until we were back at the hotel. That might seem extreme but funny things happen in boxing. It was better to be safe than sorry and I had even been warned before I went to Germany to watch out for any tricks.

  I had been at a boxing show a few months earlier in England, and the next morning I was having breakfast with my friend Dave Reay when this German boxing official came over to the table. He told us to be very careful about what could happen when we were in Germany. He warned us that our water could potentially be spiked and that even the towels left for us in the dressing room could be laced with something. I was obviously shocked, but forewarned is forearmed. So from that moment onwards Dave knew that his job when flying to Düsseldorf in fight week was to bring water and towels for the day of the fight. Paris was going to fly out but when she learned that Dave and his wife Catherine were also coming, she decided to travel with them by car, bringing the towels along with them.

  In the changing room before the fight I remained calm, as I usually do before bouts. Then suddenly I was standing in the tunnel waiting for my name to be announced by the great boxing MC, Michael Buffer. All I could see was flashing lights everywhere and all I could hear was 55,000 people screaming in anticipation of another big Klitschko fight in Germany, a country where he had become an icon. I thought to myself, ‘Right, it’s all down to me now. I’m not the biggest knockout puncher in the world and I’m up against Mr Defensive Boxer, a champion who has reigned for a decade.’

  The enormity of the challenge was real. Klitschko didn’t lose in Germany, that was the theory most people in boxing seemed to believe in. He was too powerful. I needed a miracle, but I knew that God was never going to forsake me. It wasn’t just about boxing that night. I had a duty to fulfil, a duty to speak about the Lord Jesus Christ, who had brought me to this point against the odds, and I walked into the ring to the song ‘I’m Going to Have a Little Talk With Jesus’, by Randy Travis. This was my time, the stage I
was always meant to be on.

  . . .

  From the moment I stepped through the ropes I was calm and focused, ready to do my job, to fulfil my mission. I showed my class from the start as I used my jab to great effect. I could see that Klitschko was feeling frustrated because he couldn’t get settled to throw his trademark big right hand. He was used to dominating opponents, dictating to them how the fight was going to go but he hadn’t faced anyone like me before. I was as big and as strong as he was and had better footwork and more fluid boxing skills. And I was bringing all of that to him from the start. I was outboxing him and I could feel his frustration building and building. I was feeling so confident that even as early as the third round I stuck my hands behind my back and skipped away from his punches.

  Everything was going to plan. I was scoring with good single blows and nullifying his work with ease in the first half of the fight. By the end of the sixth round – the halfway point – I felt I had probably won every round and most at ringside seemed to feel the same. The shots I was landing were starting to have an effect on Klitschko’s features as he developed a bad cut over his right eye. Some of the later rounds were a little closer but I still felt in command. I was using my feet so well that it was no wonder his team had wanted a thicker canvas to slow me down, because my movement and switch-hitting from orthodox to the southpaw stance was giving him all kinds of trouble. It was something that he had never faced before against a string of previous opponents who were cumbersome by comparison. At times it was a scrappy fight because of the way our styles clashed but there was no getting away from the fact that as the rounds clicked by I was the boss in the ring. The young lion was roaring and Klitschko knew it.

  Of course, in a big fight you are never quite sure how the judges are scoring it but that’s not in your hands. The only real issue for me was when the referee deducted me a point in the eleventh round for hitting him behind the head, which I thought was a bit unfair. In professional boxing if you win a round it’s scored 10–9, unless there is a knockdown and then it will usually be 10–8. The deduction of the point meant the scores could be tightened up. In the final round he caught me with a really good left hook and then a right hand but I took them very well and raised my hands in triumph at the sound of the final bell.

  Before the decision was announced I said to myself, ‘Please, Lord Jesus, don’t let me be robbed in this foreign country tonight,’ because I knew that Klitschko was such a big name in Germany that the judges could naturally be influenced by the desire of 55,000 mostly Germans in the arena to see him triumph once again, as they scored the rounds. But when Michael Buffer announced, ‘From the United Kingdom, the new unified champion of the world – Tyson Fury!’ I jumped into the air in celebration and my dad nearly collapsed because we didn’t expect to get a decision in Germany, where Klitschko had seemed to the world unbeatable.

  When I was interviewed in the ring I right away said, ‘This glory is not for me. This was down to my rock and my salvation, Jesus Christ. He won here tonight.’ I heard later that when they showed the fight in delayed coverage in some other countries they cut that bit out. But I had to tell the world that it was my belief in Jesus Christ that enabled me to win the world heavyweight title, to create the biggest upset in heavyweight boxing since Mike Tyson had lost to James Buster Douglas in 1990. In every interview straight after, no matter what the question was, I just told the reporters, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,’ because I knew His power got me through.

  Everyone was so excited. My family and friends were just so pleased to see me fulfil my dream. Paris was at ringside in tears and then she came into the ring. Doing the interview with HBO, I broke down in tears for the first time ever in the ring when I described how much it meant to me and dedicated the victory to my late uncle Hughie, who had coached me at the start of my career.

  Former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis was part of the commentary team for HBO and he was in the ring as well. For a brief moment the former kingpin of the division became my roadie! I handed him my bottle of water as I took his microphone and thanked Klitschko for the chance to fight for the title before singing to Paris, who by this stage was standing beside me in the ring. Off I went with Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ for a full two minutes as the fans lapped it up and the tears streamed down Paris’s face. It was an incredible feeling. Those moments in the ring after the verdict had been announced were so joyous, so emotional, they can hardly be placed into words.

  Commentating for BBC radio, former world champion and highly respected analyst Richie Woodhall – one of the few who predicted I would win – said: ‘I had it by three rounds; there was only one winner. If they had robbed him it would have been a travesty, he boxed sensationally and went to another level. The body language said it all. Wladimir and his brother Vitali knew they did not do enough. I think it’s the greatest night of boxing I’ve ever commentated on. My hat goes off to him. He excelled in every department tonight and deserves to be heavyweight champion of the world.’

  I could see how much it meant to all my family and close friends, who knew that I had predicted all along that I would dethrone Klitschko. I remember one night at Dave Reay’s house about five years earlier, we were sitting watching one of Klitschko’s fights and I turned to Dave and said, ‘I can beat him easy, no doubt about it,’ and the dream had come true.

  I was walking on air as I went back to my dressing room. I had achieved what I always said I would from when I was a little boy hitting my dad’s hands. I was on top of the world, the king of boxing. But as we drove back to the hotel my dad said to me, ‘This is where the fun and games will start. Prepare for a rocky road; prepare for a storm.’

  He felt that me winning the world title would be too much for those with power in the media and the boxing world to handle and sadly he would be proved right. Less than two weeks later I was stripped of the IBF belt and, on arriving home, I walked into a tsunami of criticism. But there was something else, something even more insidious at work, gnawing away inside of me. Even before I had left the arena in Germany, and despite having just experienced the greatest moment of triumph in my life, I started to feel empty. Not physically empty, but emotionally drained. I had reached the pinnacle of my career. Where would I go now? That night I also remember vividly the trauma of the previous few years suddenly hitting me – it was like a delayed reaction catching up. The loss of my uncle Hughie, the pain of burying my little one. That evening the hollow feeling I felt inside – that climbing to the summit of world boxing didn’t mean all that much after all – was too much. I knew I was starting to sink into my dark thoughts. What I didn’t realise at the time was how deep my despair could be, and how much further I had to fall. My depression was drawing me in inevitably, like a black hole.

  . . .

  Looking back on that moment today, thankfully I feel differently. On that night I captured the biggest prize in sport against one of boxing’s legendary champions. Tyson Fury, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. For all the pain I’ve suffered since then, and the torturous road back to recovery, that title success and that special night in Düsseldorf when I shocked the world can never be taken away from me.

  We’ll return at the end of this book to the build-up and the aftermath of the Klitschko fight, and the extent to which I soared and then fell from grace. But the highs and lows of my character have always been in me, even from childhood. So let us now go back to the very beginning, to where it all began. Let us embark on the journey of the Gypsy King.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Destiny’s Child

  I don’t know where it came from, it was just always there – the belief that I would become heavyweight champion of the world. But I wasn’t the first person to say it, that was my dad John when I was only a few minutes old – and that was after I had died three times.

  My mother Amber has suffered a lot of trauma in her life and I gave her another real fright whe
n I came into the world three months premature. In total she had sixteen pregnancies and only four survived. There’s my older brother John, me, then Shane and the youngest of the four boys, Hughie. We also had a sister, Ramona, who was born two days before Christmas 1997 but died two days later, when I was just nine.

  Mum has never been to any of my fights, amateur or professional, just because like a lot of mothers she doesn’t want to see her son in the ring getting punched. She’s a lovely person, a kind-hearted lady who always provided for us and I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it wasn’t for her. Mum was always there to encourage me. Myself and Shane spent a lot of time with her growing up – more so than with my dad, who was out working from early in the morning to late at night, mainly as a car dealer. But later, when I started boxing, he would be there every step of the way.

  Some of my mother’s family, who like my dad’s side are from the Travellers community, are from a place just outside Belfast, called Nutts Corner, although my mum has family in Wales as well. Years later, in 2011, when I was looking to prove my Irish ancestry so I could fight for the Irish heavyweight title, by chance I actually got to meet some of my mum’s family in Nutts Corner. I had flown into Belfast ahead of a fight I was set to have in that great city. I have always found the Irish people very welcoming towards me, and I happened to mention to a friend the name of my old uncle Chasey Price, someone I’d heard my parents talk about. It turns out my mate knew Chasey through trading with him, so we went and had a cup of tea on his farm. It was a day that I will treasure, but it was strange sitting with my uncle and yet still having to battle to prove my Irish heritage.

  It was even stranger because both sides of my family have had famous fighting men from Ireland going back over 200 years. I am the latest and most successful in the ring, while the majority of the men who went before me were bare-knuckle fighters. My mother is the daughter of a bare-knuckle fighter, a former King of the Gypsies, while on my father’s side of the family I am a distant cousin of Bartley Gorman, who was the bare-knuckle Gypsy King from 1972 to 1992, and died in 2002. It’s no exaggeration to say that Bartley was one of the toughest men who ever lived, and certainly the greatest bare-knuckle fighter in living memory. With his flaming red hair and stocky physique, he described himself as ‘the most dangerous unarmed man on the planet’, and I wouldn’t disagree. He would fight any man, anywhere. He once fought a man down a coal mine, illuminated by the glare of the miners’ lamps. He fought at racecourses, in campsites, even in a quarry. And he never lost. Not once in twenty-five years. He once said, ‘I will never fight a normal man … I’m liable to kill him with one punch.’