Love Islander, social media star, Tyson’s younger brother – Tommy Fury has heard all the dismissive epithets.
And yet the 22-year-old has every confidence he can begin to make a name for himself in the ring starting against Daniel Bocianski on the undercard of his big brother’s heavyweight fight against Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night.
Training with his sibling in the lead-up to his eighth professional fight, Fury Jr is confident he can begin to turn around the doubters.
“Now I’ve been on Love Island, everyone thinks I’m a social media or Instagram star and all that sort of stuff,” he said. “People don’t understand my story and what I’ve been through. They’ve just seen me on TV and gone off on that note.
“They don’t know I’ve been boxing my entire life. That’s ok because they’ll see with his fight that I’m a serious man and I’m not here to play around.
“I don’t need to box. Boxing is too hard a game to get smashed up and down every day all day when you don’t need to. The fact I’m still here, hungry and sacrificing everything when I don’t need to, it shows everything about my character.
“I don’t feel there’s anyone on this plant who wants it more than me. And when people say you can’t do it, that just motivates me. It makes me want to prove everybody wrong. I can accomplish my goal to become a world champion.”
Bocianski, with a 10-1 record, is a step-up in class for Fury in front of 90,000-plus fans at Wembley but he is confident of another win in his quest to climb up the ranks.
He fully feels the expectation of the family name but that is nothing new. “It’s a target on your back, it always has been and always will be,” he said. “But I’ve learned to live with the pressure that comes with the Fury name because ever since I’ve been a small kid, there’s been that ‘let’s have a look at him fighting, that’s Tyson’s brother, watch him spar, watch him hit the pads’.
“Everything I do around boxing has pressure on it because everybody just wants to tune in because of the last name. You’ve just got to learn how to use it. And I’m not trying to live up to Tyson, I’m not trying to be Tyson. There’s only one Tyson and there’ll never be another. I’m just trying to be the best version of me.”
He has been like a sponge soaking up information from his brother during their pre-fight training camp, seeing how he approaches fights and storing all that information away in his mind.
The No1 learning point has been in terms of mentality, which has meant him taking a shift in his approach. “Sometimes I thought all I needed was to be super strong and super fit,” he said, “now I’ve learned as long as your mind’s strong that’s the way forward.
“Boxing for me is 95% mental. Anyone can do a six-week training camp but having the mental capability on the night in front of a big crowd, performing and carrying out a game plan. Tyson teaches a massive mental thing. It’s all about his mindset, it’s his best attribute and the one main thing I picked up from him in camp.”
Both brother and father, Peter, who trains him, have told him repeatedly he has the attributes to get to the very top if he continues to work hard. His critics say otherwise, although he says writing Furys off is nothing new.
“We’ve seen it time and time again,” he said. “With Tyson’s first shot at the world title against Wladimir Klistchko it was ‘he’s fat, he’s chinless, he’ll never beat a great like Klitschko’. Time and again he’s been written off in his career and, guess what, he’s always proved them wrong. You’re going to see the exact same thing with me. We’ve all got that same mentality.”
As for the main event on Saturday, his prediction is that his brother’s fight against Dillian Whyte won’t go beyond the sixth round, calling it “one of Tyson’s easiest fights”.
As for his own bout, he is done with brash pre-fight predictions. “I just want to show what I can do.”
