One of Tyson Fury’s most advantageous traits in the boxing ring, and most enthralling out of it, has always been his unpredictability. The “Gypsy King”’s ability to awkwardly outbox opponents has perhaps only ever been matched by a similar capacity to outfox them verbally, and to stay several sizeable steps ahead of the masses.
The Briton must hope, however, that his in-ring aura endures, because its equivalent out of the ring is starting to slip away.
At Thursday’s press conference at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, hours after it was confirmed that Fury would fight old foe Derek Chisora at that very venue on 3 December, the WBC heavyweight champion came face to face with his challenger.
And while the eccentricities were as evident as ever, the excitement was absent, for Fury might as well have been reading from a script – continuing to play his part in a much larger work.
“In terms of selling Derek Chisora to the fans, I ain’t gotta sell nothing to nobody,” the unbeaten 34-year-old said, before trying to sell Derek Chisora to the fans.
“If he lands a punch on me, a big swing, I’m getting knocked out,” Fury said. “If I land a punch on him, a big swing, he’s getting knocked out. Someone’s getting chinned. I rate Derek Chisora as highly as I rate Oleksandr Usyk, and I will train as hard for Derek as I would for anyone in the world; I’d have to be an idiot not to.”
But across 22 rounds – 12 of them playing out in 2011 and 10 in 2014 – Chisora failed to land such a punch on Fury, instead falling to a decision loss in the Britons’ first clash and a TKO defeat in their second bout.
Chisora even joked that everyone involved in the impending trilogy bout would need his promoter, Eddie Hearn, to help them sell 70,000 tickets.
And as that contest approaches, fans can only hope that the in-ring action is less predictable than the announcement of the fight itself – because Wednesday’s briefing of an incoming Fury press conference was accompanied by certainty that Chisora would be the opponent. That was despite Fury’s recent negotiations with compatriot Anthony Joshua.
And in fact, every plot “twist” has been entirely foreseeable since Fury’s supposed retirement in April, which was teased ahead of the 34-year-old’s knockout of Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium. The saga that will culminate on 3 December has seen far too much of its running time devoted to that “retirement”, and the same can be said of its second act: the build to a fight with Joshua that was never going to happen.
Fury’s offer to Joshua came soon after The Independent reported that the WBC champion was in talks with Chisora, and many predicted that the “AJ” call-out was simply a ploy. It was broadly thought that an uninspiring fight would be next for Fury – whether it was to be against Chisora or not - and that the unbeaten Briton would ultimately pull the plug on talks with Joshua and place the blame on the Olympian when a less compelling bout was announced.
That is exactly what has happened, playing out as predictably as the Fury vs Chisora press conference itself.
Thursday’s event was microcosmic of the plot that has followed Fury’s every move this year, and fewer and fewer fans will do just that if they continue to feel that they can see those moves coming.
