Is Tyson Fury the United Kingdom Boxing’s Trump Card?

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Over here in the UK the US election has been a fascinating watch – we observe better than we play at times. As the guy with the funny hair looks likely to be up against the woman with the dodgy husband it would be easy for us to sneer. Over in the UK we have our own set of oddballs and funny people who are trying to run the country but recently it has been one boxer who has made not only the back pages of the newspapers but the front pages too.

When he stopped the reign of Wladimir Klitschko and perhaps more surprisingly got a points win in Germany, he won many fans. It was hardly a classic performance but what it did was send the heavyweight division into a new phase; it got exciting again.

Within a few days he had lost one of the belts and now there is another North American heavyweight champion who took the IBF belt he lost for not fighting a mandatory opponent. Instead he agreed the rematch that was part of his agreed contract with Klitschko.

For those of us who knew and followed the career of Tyson Fury what happened next was not surprising. Fury is an unusual figure; some might say very unusual. He comes from a travelling family who have adopted a strict form of Christianity that has very distinct and strict interpretations of the bible. A catholic sect, it has literal translations of the teachings of Christ at its heart and with that comes some orthodox and traditionalist views. This became the focus of his popularity and not his sporting prowess.

In an interview that was buried in amongst many other interviews, Fury had suggested that the world was likely to end once abortion was legal, homosexuality was legal and finally paedophilia. There was a suggestion he had made connected all three of them. It made headline news. Fury was now a personality.

It coincided with the annual personality contest where the public, thanks to the BBC, get to vote publicly for the person they believe has been … actually there isn’t a set of terms of reference for the award. In fact, at times there have been winners who have been so devoid of personality the very name of it has been brought into question.

Fury was an obvious candidate, considering what he had achieved. He was also very much a personality. The problem was that his personality kept getting out. He was far from media savvy and having been catapulted to fame he was now relishing his opportunity to be controversial. As well as the view that homosexuality would bring about the end of the world and that paedophilia was associated with it, he now made sexist remarks about one of the other contestants on BBC personality of the year suggesting that when she was well dressed she scrubbed up well. On top of this he suggested that women, particularly his wife, ought to be subservient to his needs in almost every way.

Had this been the 1950’s then Fury might well have been seen as some kind of figure of fun at worst and at best just a guy who said what everybody thought. This was, however 2015 and everybody thought he was a bit of a clown.

What he said was disgraceful and wrong. The problem is or was that he believed it; and still does. The effect of his views was to bring boxing from the back sports pages of our newspapers and put it back in the headlines. Fury was news = boxing is news.

We now have television stations who have not been near boxing for years talking of it making a comeback on mass market channels. Fury has been part of the programme of rehabilitation but he has also been a bit of an embarrassment for the sport; his views may be shared in the gyms but are rarely uttered outside of them. The times for us are a changing and Fury openly represents the more Conservative values that have hindered that progress. To them he is only speaking the truth and views held by the Pope amongst others.

His rematch with Klitschko has been almost as bizarre as his opinions as there have been rumours of it being in London, ending up in Dubai or even on a yacht with 120 millionaires watching. No matter where it is, we can rest assured that after the fight, no matter what happens people shall hope that Fury keeps his mouth on boxing and not on anything else. The nervousness that comes with a microphone under his chin is as palpable as we feel each time a protester is yanked out a Trump rally. Almost universally, in the UK, we are concerned of the possibility of a Trump victory in a Presidential election. Perhaps we should also be worried about the return of a Tyson Fury to prime time television though we know one of them can be told that they are not allowed to speak to the media – can you guess which one? Actually neither can I…

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