Tommy Fury is still performing his controversial 'medicine ball' exercise with his brother Tyson, insisting it had nothing to do with the rib injury that forced him out of his fight with Jake Paul.
Fans were furious when after the Love Island star was forced to cancel his bout with Paul due to a broken rib, footage emerged showing Tyson hammering his midsection with a medicine ball in an ab exercise.
The commonly-used ab exercise is popular with boxers, but concerned fans who felt it could have damaged his rib before he broke his rib in a training session gone wrong. The younger Fury was training with an unnamed heavyweight when he received a bare-knuckle punch that caused the severe injury, sidelining him for over four months.
But he insists that the exercise is in fact a positive for fighters, and he returned to it with his brother once he had been medically cleared to spar full contact again. "We're still doing it!" Fury told the Queensberry Promotions YouTube channel. "We're still doing it because that's not what caused the injury.
"I've done the medicine ball throughout my whole life. I've been doing it for 20 years. That's not what caused the injury, again I know it's way back when, but for people out there who don't know and think that's what caused the injury, that is not what caused the injury.
"That is a very good technique to get the abs and the core ready for the fight so I won't be cutting that out. But at the end of the day we're just training more smartly now and nursing it."
Fury is set to take a major step-up in competition on his return to the ring when he faces 10-1 Polish fighter Daniel Bocianski. It will be just the second time he's fought anybody with a winning record in his eight professional fights, and he's preparing properly without pushing himself too hard.
"I'm not doing things stupidly and testing it any more because with ribs it's a long healing process," he said of the injury. "I've been sparring heavy guys in the gym, taking heavy shots around it and I'm more than happy with it."
And he believes that a win over Bocianski will be enough to earn him another fight date with Paul, assuming the YouTuber isn't scared off by the "dirty knockout" he's promised. "This man I'm about to fight would iron Jake Paul out easy," he added.
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"Because this man has probably got a family to feed - this is his only way of making money, he probably needs to make the money. He's going to come in with killer ambition.
"Whenever I get asked about Jake Paul, it doesn't really spring anything in me because that's an easy fight for me. I'm used to fighting guys who are hungry and used to putting their life on the line.
"When the going gets tough, when Jake Paul is in a tough fight he's going to want to not continue because that's the type of man he is. When he fights me, that's exactly what will happen."
