Tyson Fury is “past his best” as a boxer, his father has incredibly claimed while admitting their relationship is “destroyed.”
Fury is set to emerge out of his latest retirement to fight Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. But he will do so after his father, John Fury, claimed his ability was declining.
“I think he’s past his best,” John told the Daily Mail. “I’m a no-filter kind of guy — I say it how I see it. I love him, but there are too many people patting him on the back and telling him things that aren’t true, building him up like he’s invincible. He’s not and he hasn’t been for a while.
“Tyson has been gone since the Deontay Wilder fights, they finished him.”
John also revealed: “My relationship with Tyson is destroyed.”
Fury beat Wilder twice in their epic trilogy but lost his undefeated record and his WBC belt to Oleksandr Usyk. He also fell short in a rematch with Usyk which preceded his latest long absence from the ring.
His father insists he told Fury not to take the first fight with Usyk.
“I begged and prayed with him before the first fight,” John said.
“He’d already been through a full training camp, and then he got cut in the last week. He was worn out from that camp. You can’t just have three weeks’ rest and then go straight into another seven weeks — that’s what happened.
“‘I said, take two weeks. His Excellency [Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority] was going to give us a £10 million ($13m) fine to pull out of the fight and I said take it. Give yourself four months, rest properly, then we’ll go again. But no, after the fight, what does he do? Puts himself straight back into another seven or eight week camp, already as weak as anything.
“I thought, if we don’t get this job done quickly, he’s going to fade down the stretch.”
John Fury had been left with blood streaming down his face in the days prior to his son’s first fight with Usyk, after headbutting a member of the Ukrainian’s entourage.
Fury’s father was hugely critical of Sugarhill Steward, the ex-champion’s most recent trainer.
“I felt like strangling Sugar afterwards,” John said.
“He’s no Emanuel Steward — he’s nothing like him. He’s just a gym sweeper, that’s all he ever was.”
Fury’s father attended his news conference opposite Makhmudov to promote their fight. He became embroiled in a war of words with former super-middleweight world champion Carl Froch, even challenging him to fight on his son’s undercard.
Tyson Fury had claimed that he will return to the ring against Makhmudov without a trainer in his corner, although this remains unconfirmed.
He has been training in Thailand to face the huge Russian.
Fury, now 37, might hope for a third crack at Usyk after the heavyweight champion named him on a three-fight list of opponents before he calls it a day.