by Fury, Tyson
I have become very aware of just how big the issue of mental health is since I went on my speaking tour all over the UK after the Deontay Wilder fight. I met thousands of people who described exactly the kinds of problems that I have gone through. I’ve also received numerous letters as well as direct messages online, from members of the public and from other top sports stars and public figures. At times it has just been overwhelming, but everyone needs to know that people from every part of society are going through these kinds of problems – feeling there is no point to life, unable to see a purpose, being hit by a sense of helplessness. I want to say this again, to each and every person, that if the heavyweight champion of the world can go as low as any person can do, when he’s supposed to be so tough, then it can happen to anyone. But there is a way back.
One of the most humbling and proudest moments of my life was when I was asked by Frank Bruno to become an ambassador for his foundation. Frank has gone into detail about his own struggles with mental health and is determined to help as many people as possible. To now be a mental health ambassador means so much to me. It happened around the time I was doing my talks as they have all proved to be very moving experiences. I’ve seen so many men and women reduced to tears as they have listened and related my story to their own lives and what they are going through, expressing their own fears and worries. I don’t say this because I want a pat on the back and to be told that I’m a great fella, or that I’m the one who can help everybody, because I’m not. That’s why the first thing I say to people who come up to me is that they need to go and seek medical advice. But I am touched that even people I have never spoken to before have been affected in a positive way by my story. I’ve had people from Africa, Asia, America and Europe fly in to some of my nights on tour and they’ve come up and expressed to me the impact my story has had on them, and it’s a very, very humbling experience. But at the same time it makes me realise that this is my real purpose now in life. One man from Texas recently flew in for a show that I did in Manchester and he came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for saving my wife’s life.’ Another person came from South Korea to the show in Leeds and said a similar thing, that somehow my fight against depression had inspired their loved ones to fight back.
The very concerning thing for me is the amount of younger people who are suffering in silence. Mental health is a silent killer and it needs to be brought out into the open so much more. It’s very disturbing to see how young people are affected and how they feel they have nobody to turn to; like one lad I spoke to for an hour in Sheffield who stood there trembling, telling me he didn’t want to live any more. Or the teenager I started speaking to on a bridge because I noticed that he didn’t have a coat or his mobile phone with him and was in a desperate situation. It’s shocking to think that suicides among teenagers in England and Wales have risen by 67 per cent since 2010 and it’s the biggest killer of men under forty-five years of age. I feel passionately that this has to be addressed with much more vigour than ever. This is bigger than boxing, it’s people’s lives on the line and you don’t have to do shows around the country to be aware of it. One Sunday I was in the back garden when the doorbell rang and it was this woman who was in a right state about her son, who she said was feeling suicidal and she begged me to go and speak to him. He didn’t live too far so Ben and I went down and spoke to him; being a teenager he felt awkward about telling his parents something, but he felt he could open up to Ben and myself. A few days later he came to the house and gave Paris a box of chocolates and a thank-you card because that one hour chat had helped give him the encouragement he needed to get up and face the world again. Young boys and girls need people to speak to, they need specialist help so they can move forward in their lives.
Homelessness is another issue that I feel passionately about and, of course, many of those who are homeless will have mental health issues which are often the root causes of the rising problem. I saw the horror of it in Los Angeles when I was preparing to fight Deontay Wilder but it’s the same right across the UK and it just can’t be right that one of the richest countries in the world can have so many people without proper shelter. These are big problems for people in higher positions than me to get to grips with, but I will keep trying to play my small part and if I can continue to be an inspiration to others then that will mean the world to me.
Certainly, the public’s perception of me has changed a lot since my comeback and there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t receive some letters of support in the post. People just write ‘Tyson Fury, Morecambe, England’ and it makes it to my home. Letters have come from all over the world and while I read every one of them, I sadly don’t always have the time to respond to them. But the stories that people send me are heart-breaking: about how their husbands, parents or teenagers have been tortured by depression and felt that they had no way out but that listening to my story had inspired them to change.
My wife Paris has been shocked as well by the change in the public’s reaction to me. Before my comeback it got to the point where she didn’t want to go out in case she heard bad comments about me or someone would even confront her about something I had said on Twitter, but now she has seen how positive people are and the effect my story has had on people. It even led the great singer Robbie Williams to get in touch with me so we could record a Christmas song together. He came over to my house, we set up a makeshift recording studio and made the record.
Whereas before I would have been concerned about what I would do in my life after boxing, I no longer have that same fear because I have a purpose beyond the sport. I also feel that when I do retire I’ll stay around the sport because I believe I can advise young boxers on the pitfalls and how to make sure that they get the best they can out of the sport. I know the business of professional boxing inside out now and I feel if anyone wanted advice I could give it to them. Boxing is a sport that gives kids a chance to change their lives. Look at someone like Naseem Hamed, who went from a council estate in Sheffield to becoming a multimillionaire, or the lives that Frank Bruno and Ricky Hatton were able to have because boxing can offer you rich rewards if you are prepared to make sacrifices to achieve your goals.
Yet, at the same time you could sacrifice maybe fifteen years of life and still not end up with much at the end of it. It’s such a high-intensity sport, the highs can be so high and the lows so low for a fighter who loses that it is very easy for boxers to slip into a depressive state. Equally, for so many the adulation can be so intoxicating that when the time is right to walk away from the sport they are unable to do so because it is such a drug, and replacing the high of thousands of people chanting their name can be so frustrating that it leads to depression. Many fighters have spoken about this, and the problem with boxing is that when a fighter has finished his career there is no body or group to help them with life after boxing.
Other sports have a governing body that has people who can help, but boxing is such an individual sport and an unforgiving business in many ways that there is no real support mechanism to help former fighters. I’m fortunate that I have a brilliant support network around me but also that I have goals beyond my days in the ring. I will always need to train but equally I believe I can be around the sport and give something back to those who feel they need help.
It is often spoken about in sport what kind of legacy someone will leave behind, but that is not something that I am very interested in. I don’t like to dwell on how people will view me in years to come because that’s up to them. What I can deal with is the here and now, and that’s about enjoying my accomplishments in the ring but also, more importantly, being a good father and a good husband. Paris and I are very determined to make sure that our children have good values. They can’t expect to be given any handouts. It would be very easy to spoil our kids and, of course, they will grow up in a comfortable environment in comparison to many children. But if they’re going to make their own way in life they will have to know that it requires hard wor
k. We’re very blessed to have five great kids. Our eldest, Venezuela, seems to have inherited my athletic genes and a bit of my showmanship as well because she’s already looking like a very good runner and really enjoys her dancing, while Paris says Tyson junior is just like me because he doesn’t listen to a word she says! A close family unit is worth more than gold and that’s a top priority for us.
I have come to appreciate more and more the simple things in life, to appreciate my family more than ever – whether that’s enjoying a lunch together or a holiday with the kids like in the summer when we were in London and it was Tyson junior’s third birthday. We had his party at Shrek’s Adventure! and it was fantastic. I couldn’t have been any happier and yet even then there was a little reminder of how my mood can swing in a moment. We were meant to drive down to London but I just said to Paris, ‘I can’t do this’, so we booked the train instead and it was perfect. We went to the aquarium and had a lovely time together. It was a precious moment and if I want to be remembered for anything it is being a good father and husband. Champions come and go, and they’re forgotten about.
. . .
For as long as I box, and beyond that, I hope that I can continue to be a beacon of hope for people so that they can have their own ‘Wilder moments’ – the time when they rise from their bed and face the world again, or when they see a new purpose to life, like the guy who sent me a picture of himself at 20 stone and then one of him after he had lost 8 stone. Overcoming problems like these is far from easy, and everybody who suffers finds themselves in a unique position; what works for one person may not work for another. But there is genuine hope of making a change to their lives, and my life is a testimony to that.
My way out was to get down on my knees and cry out to God because there was nothing else that was going to free me from the despair I was in. He answered my prayer, I felt a sense of a burden lifted and God decided that I would have another chapter in boxing. I stopped the drinking and partying, teamed up with a new trainer, Ben Davison, and started the long journey back to being the fighter I knew I could be again, and more importantly back to being the person I knew I was – or should be.
I had come to terms with the depression and the anxiety I was being tortured with and everyone around me could see the difference as the months went by and I got stronger and stronger. My marriage returned to normal and I was able to be the real me. I’m far from perfect: I still have moments when my mood dips for no reason, I still say some silly things but, by the grace of God, I’m a changed man. I didn’t want to put on an act any more, I wasn’t going to put on a mask and play a role any more, I just wanted to be me – to be a good husband and father and to do justice to my God-given talent in the ring. I had to face up to the fact that I was in denial about my behaviour at times and the life-long fight I’ve had with depression.
But I want everyone to know that if I can win this fight, so can you if you seek help. To those family members suffering as they watch a loved one act in a way that is not normal, I hope they can stay in the fight too, just as Paris did for me. No matter how bleak it is, there is a way out; I know how dark it can get, but I also know there is light, there is hope, and I’m an example of that. I make plenty of mistakes like anyone else, but I’m battling on and appreciating life like never before.
1. From the moment I came out of my mother’s womb on 12 August 1988, three months premature and weighing in at just one pound, I was showing my fighting spirit just to stay alive.
2. My mum and dad feared the worst when the doctors made it clear that it was a 100/1 shot that I would make it through the night.
3. 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.
4. When I opened my eyes after coming back to life for the fourth time, my dad has told me that he looked at me and said, ‘He’s going to make it, he’ll be 7 foot tall, 20 stone, he’s going to be called after Mike Tyson and he’ll be the heavyweight champion of the world.’ He was right! And I was lucky enough to meet Mike, too.
5. Fighting is in my DNA, going back in Ireland over 200 years. 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 related to Bartley Gorman, who was the bare-knuckle Gypsy King from 1972 to 1992, and died in 2002. He described himself as ‘the most dangerous unarmed man on the planet’, and I wouldn’t disagree.
6. My dad, John Fury, was a bare-knuckle fighter and boxer.
7. The Fury boxers today (from left to right): My half-brother Tommy, my uncle Peter, me, my cousin Hughie and my dad John. All fighting men.
8. Me on the left, with my dad and my brother Shane. The importance of a good family unit is a clear positive within the Travellers community.
10. I often used to think that the way we were living was something like that popular television programme The Darling Buds of May, where the family grew up in the countryside, living life their way.
11. Like the majority of Travellers I left school around ten years of age. The average boy is encouraged to get out and start doing work before secondary school age and my dad just had the same attitude – that there is a big world out there and if you want some money then you need to go out and earn it.
12. The Fury boys: along with my dad, 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.
13. Me and Steve Egan at my first gym – Jimmy Egan’s Boxing Academy. When I arrived I was 6 foot 5 and nearly 15 stone at just fourteen, so you could say that I stood out a bit. I had never been taught how to fight, but I knew the gym was my home; this was where I was always meant to be.
14. Before I left that first night, Steve had told his dad to get me a medical card – that’s the record book that every amateur boxer has. They knew I was a natural and didn’t want to let me go. Steve took one look at me and told his dad, ‘Heavyweights don’t move like that. Get him a card.’
15. On the wall now at Jimmy Egan’s gym reads a quote from me: ‘I was made by God, but trained at Jimmy Egan’s.’
16. When the word was out that I wanted to turn professional in 2008, at twenty years old, there was a lot of interest in my signature because of my amateur exploits. The famous American promoter Don King actually approached my dad about signing me up. But my dad, being such a big Mike Tyson fan, was wary of the way King and Tyson had bitterly parted company, and thought that should be a big warning sign for me. So I wasn’t going to be signing for King. Then Mick Hennessy, who at the time had a good stable of fighters, came up with a compelling signing-on fee and the promise of regular fights, and that sounded like the best offer to both my dad and me.
17. December 2008, my professional debut. I wanted to make an instant impact and I did just that when I enjoyed a first-round technical knockout of Hungarian Béla Gyöngyösi with a head-body combination.
18. After that I wanted more and more fights and, true to his word, my manager Mick Hennessy had me fighting eight times in 2009 so that I was quickly able to start making a name for myself.
19. I’ve only had four truly tough fights in my life. The dramatic world-title fight against Deontay Wilder in 2018, the second fight with John McDermott (because I wasn’t fit) back in 2010, my fight with Steve Cunningham in New York in 2013, and my battle with depression – the hardest of the lot by some distance.
21. I won my second fight with John McDermott on pure guts because after four rounds I had nothing left. I then took a headbutt to the eye in the seventh round but to be honest I was that tired I didn’t even care about it. Sometimes fighters panic when they’re cut, but when I tasted the blood I thought, ‘Lovely. This will look good on TV!’
22. April 2013. Under
the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, Steve Cunningham and I had some good exchanges in the first round and the crowd were loving it.
23. The Yanks liked it even more when I hit the deck at the start of the second round. I came out with my hands down, feeling a bit flash, and was sent crashing to the canvas by a cracking right hand from Cunningham.
24. This turned into an out-and-out epic. Finally, an uppercut from me rocked him back and then a big right hook had him sliding across the ropes and on to his back. As soon as he was counted out I leaped on to the ropes and spread my arms out wide like Russell Crowe in Gladiator. ‘Are you not entertained?’