Tyson Fury :“I’ve got nothing to prove, If he’s really retired this time … what is Tyson Fury’s legacy?

“I’ve got nothing to prove to anybody, and nothing to return for.”

Tyson Fury spoke those words in a video posted on social media on May 24. Call me a sucker, but I believe he meant what he was saying.

Yes, this is a man who has announced his retirement at least five times now. And, yes, only a man who has un-retired four times can retire five times. So, the default position should be extreme skepticism, if not outright repudiation.

And the words themselves aren’t necessarily true. I suppose the first half, about having nothing to prove, may have some validity for a 36-year-old fighter who fought 37 times across 16 years. But to claim he has “nothing to return for”? That’s just factually inaccurate given the sort of money in the pot if he were to finally fight Anthony Joshua.

Still, I believe Fury believes he has nothing to return for.

I believe he doesn’t feel an AJ payday is worth his while, not with the money he already has and with the fire in his belly nearly snuffed out.

Every previous Fury retirement has been entirely unconvincing. Every time, you just knew he was coming back eventually.

But something feels different about this one.

I’m not saying he won’t fight again; the smart money is always on a boxer dusting off the gloves one last time.

But if he didn’t fight again, if this retirement were to stick, I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe I’m an easy mark, but I think there’s an entirely reasonable chance that we’ve seen Fury in the ring for the final time.

Or, short of that coming true, I think it’s highly possible that he’s content enough to stay retired for at least a couple of years. By the time the urge returns to again be the center of attention in a way that only headlining a boxing event can satisfy, Fury will be too old and too far gone to alter his legacy one way or the other.

What is that legacy?

If Fury never fights again, or at least never fights again as a vague approximation of the prime “Gypsy King,” what mark has he made and how will he be remembered?

Let’s get the easy part out of the way: Fury is a Hall of Famer. Whether his fiercest critics like it or not, he will make his way to Canastota.

To take it a step further, he will in fact be a first-ballot slam dunk – as long as he doesn’t find himself on the same first ballot as three or more all-timers. Hypothetically, if Oleksandr Usyk, Terence Crawford, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, and Fury all retired the same year, then Fury would be stuck waiting for his second ballot to get in.

Barring that, Fury is getting a plaque on the wall the moment he’s eligible.

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Unfortunately, getting into the Hall of Fame as a heavyweight champion doesn’t necessarily mean you cracked the pantheon of true heavyweight greats.

Michael Moorer, Riddick Bowe, Ingemar Johansson, Ken Norton, Max Schmeling, James J. Braddock, Luis Firpo, Jack Sharkey, Jess Willard — the list is long of Hall of Fame heavyweights whose names probably wouldn’t cross your mind as you’re working on a top-20-ever list.

That raises a compelling thought exercise with regard to Fury.

If a boxing writer is given an assignment to rank the 20 greatest heavyweights, and he’s putting together that first rough list where he just wants to make sure he has every name who could possibly make the cut — a starter compilation maybe 25 to 30 names long — does the writer jot down “Tyson Fury” for consideration?

Here are some factors in Fury’s favor:

He held the lineal heavyweight title for 8½ years. Yes, he was inactive for the first 2½ of those years, and there were some 10-rounders mixed in, so it’s a bit reminiscent of what folks still criticize a century later about Jack Dempsey’s reign (seven years, just five successful title defenses). But here’s a complete list of champions with a longer uninterrupted lineal run than Fury: Joe Louis. That’s it. End of list.

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• That reign began with a convincing win — ugly though it may have been — over a first-ballot Hall of Fame champion in Wladimir Klitschko, who at the time hadn’t lost a fight in more than 11 years.
• He was one-half of the most thrilling heavyweight trilogy at least since Bowe vs. Evander Holyfield, and was undefeated in that trilogy, going 2-0-1 against Deontay Wilder (and most feel Fury should have been 3-0). Their third fight was quite possibly the most exciting heavyweight title of this century; at worst it was number two behind Joshua-Klitschko.
• The first Fury-Wilder fight featured probably a top-five most memorable moment in boxing in the 2000s. There’s Juan Manuel Marquez knocking out Manny Pacquiao; the finish of Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo; round nine of the first Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti fight; and – somewhere right in there among them for a singular iconic moment – Fury getting up off the canvas in the final round of that Wilder fight.
  • If indeed Fury is retired, he will have ended his career with losses to only one opponent. Usyk defeated him — closely — twice. Nobody else quite hung a loss on Fury.

  Now here are some factors working against Fury:

  • After Klitschko and Wilder, who’s the next best opponent he defeated? Probably Dillian Whyte. Maybe Derek Chisora. Next on the list after those two would be Otto Wallin. The point is, it’s a massive drop-off from the two best heavyweights Fury beat in his career to everyone else.
  • he list of quality opponents Fury didn’t face is rather lengthy. There’s Joshua, of course. At various points in the last five years or so, Daniel Dubois, Zhang Zhilei, Joseph Parker, or Andy Ruiz could have made a lot of sense. Had Fury faced and beaten any of those men, they would have done wonders for that drop-off from Fury’s second-best opponent beaten to his third-best
  • He was one round on one scorecard away from losing to Francis Ngannou.Even though positive tests for cocaine are not held against Fury from a competitive standpoint, there was apositive test for the banned steroid Nandrolone early in his career. Is one failed PED test a legacy-killer nowadays? No. But it’s still a strike against you.If the action and drama of the Wilder fights counts to some small degree in Fury’s favor when considering his place in heavyweight history, then it’s only fair to count the lack of action of the Klitschko fight against him. For 36 minutes in Dusseldorf that night, boxing lost its designation as a combat sport.

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    • Add it all up, and I think it’s fair to call Fury heavyweight history’s most overachieving underachiever.

      He accomplished so much more than you ever would have expected if you saw him early in his career. Fury became the subject of an iconic GIF when he accidentally uppercutted himself in the face. There was also concern over his chin when he was getting dropped by cruiserweights and generally embodying the term “galoot” better than any boxer ever.

      But he could have accomplished so much more than he did if he’d stayed focused, not abused his body, and fought a few more of his most deserving challengers while he was still in his prime.

      It’s hard to believe now, but in 2020, after the second win over Wilder, it was suggested that Fury might be favored over any heavyweight from history.

       

       

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    • Perhaps it was recency bias; that abovementioned win came in the most complete and destructive performance or Fury’s career. He was 30-0-1 at the time, could box, could slug, could fight inside, could fight outside, and was able to do all this at (officially) 6-foot-9 and some 270 lbs.
    • When Fury was going well, before we’d seen Usyk hand him a couple of defeats, there was that moment when people wondered: How would Muhammad Ali have dealt with this guy? What could Joe Louis have done against him? Would his namesake Mike Tyson ever have gotten close enough to hit him?

      Of course, those are probably inappropriate questions to try to answer when a boxer is at his absolute apex and we haven’t yet seen what his inevitable fall looks like. It’s just as unfair to mythically match him up against the greats right now, when his two losses to Usyk are so fresh in our minds.

      We need a little distance, perhaps, to properly assess Fury’s legacy.

      But if indeed the Usyk rematch is his final fight and he never competes again, how will Tyson Fury be remembered?

      He may be remembered foremost for his enormity — in both personality and stature.

      He will also be remembered for his uniquely awkward effectiveness — as well as his uniquely effective awkwardness.

      He will be remembered for the length of his lineal reign and for the depth of his trilogy with Wilder.

    • And he will go down as a heavyweight you probably pause to consider when compiling a list of the all-timers, even if you ultimately find it not all that difficult to trim him as you make your next round of cuts.