My mum could fight like a man with both fists – it’s second nature in our family, says Tyson Fury’s dad John
SHOWING a Zen-like calm, Tyson Fury weighed in for another bone-crushing heavyweight contest – as his snarling dad John went berserk.
It was 2018 in Belfast, and in the crowd the raging elder Fury had spotted Tyson’s future opponent — the then world champion Deontay Wilder — and a “red mist” descended.
In an exclusive interview, former bare-knuckle boxer John told me: “Wilder was cussing us and my switch flicked.
“My mother used to say, ‘No matter who they are, son, stand your ground’. I don’t care if you’re the heavyweight champion of the world, you’re not going to put it on me and walk away.”
Well-versed in hardcore violence — John was once jailed for gouging out a man’s eye — he had to be restrained by security guards.
Tyson, who inherited his father’s fighting prowess, if not his fiery nature, “had a few quiet words” to calm him down.
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Now John has catalogued his eventful life in an autobiography, appropriately named When Fury Takes Over.
Tyson — current WBC world heavyweight champion — has written the foreword, describing John as “our clan leader”.
The book charts John’s life, from his birth in a “bow-top gypsy wagon” on an Irish roadside in Tuam, County Galway, to becoming a Netflix reality TV star.
Speaking from Saudi Arabia — where Tyson is preparing for his fight on Saturday with Cameroonian Francis Ngannou — John said: “I wake up every morning now thinking it’s a dream. My childhood was very different to that of my kids’.
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“Growing up, it was a struggle to get the bare necessities like running water, electricity and a fixed abode.”
One of four boys, John is the son of Irish traveller Hughie and English Romany gypsy Patience, known as Cissy, who roamed Britain in their caravan.
John recalled: “Back then every pub you went to used to say, ‘No dogs and no travellers’.
“People looking at you and being derogatory was how it was. You know, ‘The gypsies are in town, lock up your kids, lock up your belongings’.
“But my family treated people with respect and we expected it back.
“We were clean and tidy, we never abused people’s property.
“But everyone was stigmatised as thieves and vagabonds.
“Over the years we’ve had to integrate and learn the settled people’s ways.”
According to John it was tough-as-nails Cissy — a “natural southpaw” (left-handed boxer) — who gave the family their boxing abilities.
John didn’t get much regular schooling due to deep-rooted prejudice against travellers.
In the same gravelly tones as Tyson, John, 59, told me: “If a gypsy went to school in the early Seventies, you weren’t going to learn anything because you got battered from pillar to post.
“You were more worried about getting a good hiding than learning stuff, so we never bothered.
Good hiding
“My dad said, ‘Learn to get your living’. So we went out with my mother and father, working.”
That meant hawking — selling — carpets door-to-door or surfacing roads.
Dad-of-six John recalled: “I hawked at my first house when I was about seven years old.
“If you opened the door to John Fury when he was a kid, I hope you had half an hour to spare.
“‘No’ was often the answer but I had to talk them into saying ‘yes’ to help put food on our table.
“Half the time they bought carpets off me just to get rid of me.”
Very much his mother’s son, the young John was as adept with his fists as he was with the sales patter.
He said: “Fighting has always been in our family — it’s our second nature.
“I was big for my age and people my age wanted to fight me.
“I would beat them up and then they’d go and get their big brother.
“It was a free-for-all. You either damage me or I damage you. It was dog eat dog.
“I probably got more hidings than anyone alive. It’s turned me into the person I am today.”
When John was 15 he fought a dad in his thirties who had called him a “gyppo” after John brawled with his son.
As the bearded man came towards him demanding a fight, John hit him “with a left and a right”.
He recalled: “He went straight down and I kicked him full in the face with the instep of my hobnail boots.”
Eventually John ended up in a Nottinghamshire borstal, which he likens to the grim 1979 film Scum, starring Ray Winstone.
There he confronted two bullies, punching one “weasel” so hard “that his nose shattered”.
Afraid his sentence would be increased, John jumped from a third-storey window to escape.
On the run for three years, he met traveller Amber, who became his wife and had a son, John Boy, when John was just 18.
Then he was arrested and sent to a young offenders’ unit to finish his sentence.
In 1988 his son Tyson Luke Fury arrived three months premature, weighing just 1lb.
John said: “I could hold him in the palm of my hand. He had to be a fighter to survive.”
John and Amber had two other sons, Shane and Hughie. In 1997 daughter Ramona was born but died after just four days.
When the couple split, John found love again with second wife Chantal and became a dad to two more boys, Roman, and boxer and Love Island star Tommy.
With cash short, John — a seasoned street fighter — decided to try boxing professionally.
He entered a promoter’s gym for an audition wearing hobnail boots and jeans, and recalled: “They looked at me funny but it was all about money for me to feed my family.
“Fighting professionally for a few hundred pounds on a Saturday night was easy money for me.
“Meanwhile I was trading scrap metal, doing some roofing, tarmacking and still hawking carpets.”
John was also carrying on a family tradition of bare-knuckle boxing.
The 6ft 3in bruiser, who later helped guide Tyson as he made his way in the conventional game, said his tactics were to “throw a lot of punches” and “get the job done as soon as possible”.
His professional record included four losses, but with bare knuckles he was unbeaten, adding: “I was prepared to fight anyone, anywhere, any time.”
John bought a farm at Styal, in Cheshire, when he was 26 and the settled life gave Tyson a formal education his father was denied.
The future champion went to the local primary school, where John remembers he was “huge” compared to the other boys in his class.
Tyson began boxing aged 11 and took to it “like a duck to water”.
By the time he was 15 he was already 6ft 5in and finding sparring partners difficult to come by.
John would drive him as far afield as Huddersfield and Leicester looking for suitable fighters who could cope with his son’s explosive power.
‘Prison didn’t bother me’
When John was 30 he embarked on a five-year stint as an “enforcer” — which meant people who were owed a debt or were being bullied could call him and he would “sort it out in my own way for a fee”.
In 2011, John was jailed for 11 years after gouging out fellow traveller Oathie Sykes’s eye following a 12-year feud.
John said: “It was two gypsy people, proud people, so someone’s going to get hurt.
“I never intended to hurt him like that but, when you are fighting where anything goes, it can happen.
"If it had happened to me I’d have moved on and not got the police involved because I’m a true-bred, fighting, travelling man.
“Other people don’t think like me but that’s in the past and I’ve moved on from it.”
He added: “Prison didn’t bother me. I’m a big believer in Jesus Christ and thought, ‘If this is my destiny, I’ll come out a better man’.
“I abided by the rules, didn’t talk back to anybody and kept myself very fit. I salute the prison officers.
"When I finally left prison after serving five years, I took the warders some boxing gloves signed by Tyson. They were very good to me.”
Now John avoids big gatherings in case his violent temper should get him into trouble again.
Months after his release in 2015, he was ringside to witness Tyson become world champion after beating Wladimir Klitschko.
With his gift of the gab from hawking carpets, John was TV gold at weigh-ins and press conferences.
And he was soon a star turn on reality shows including ITV’s Tyson Fury: The Gypsy King series and Netflix’s At Home With The Furys.
But, like Tyson, John suffers from mental health issues.
He admits: “Even after everything Tyson has achieved, I can get up in the morning and think, ‘What a waste of time, nothing is worth anything’.
“The only thing you get in your head is negative stuff.
“I try and put it to one side and be positive about everything and say, ‘OK mental health, I ain’t playing today.
“If I’m feeling not too clever I find some nice, bubbly person to talk to. They can make you feel so much better.”
Yet the red mist can still descend for John.
At son Tommy’s final press conference before fighting KSI last Saturday, a sweary John punched and headbutted a Perspex panel dividing the two fighters.
He said: “It’s not pantomime, it’s the real me. If you upset me, I’m going to have a go back.
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“On my gravestone I’d like them to put, ‘John Fury, a man of extremes’. I may be a fighter but the best of me is as a father.”
- When Fury Takes Over, by John Fury (Macmillan, £22), is out on Thursday.
- Tomorrow: Exclusive extracts – why gangland boss put a contract out to kill me.
