Tyson Fury put on a song and dance act in a concourse at Dusseldorf Airport as he and Wladimir Klitschko staged their public work-outs prior to Saturday’s battle of the giants for the world heavyweight title.
Fury ended his session by directing his adapted version of The Wind Beneath My Wings at the watching champion.
These were the key lines from the Mancunian traveller, who plans to sing again ‘after I knock out Wladimir’: ‘It must be cold there in my shadow You are the one with all the glory I’m the one with all the strength Soon I’ll be the one with all the belts You are the wind beneath my wings.’
Immediately thereafter the two men found themselves together in a ring for the first time. Klitschko climbed through the ropes to begin his work-out while Fury was still standing in one corner giving interviews and joking with a crowd of several hundred airline passengers passing through the terminal…travellers all.
‘Nothing personal against Wladimir,’ he told them, ‘but look at him. He’s very nervous and he’s realising now why he never wanted to fight me. He’s only doing it now because I’ve worked all my life to become his mandatory challenger and he has to fight me.’ Klitschko’s trainer Jonathan Banks referred to Fury being the even bigger man, saying: ‘Tyson is the Titanic but Wladimir is the iceberg.’
Fury responded: ‘This is not 1912. It’s 2015. We have all the technology now and we no longer sail into icebergs.’
He also challenged the perceivedwisdom that his best chance of springing one of boxing’s all-time upsets is to land a concussive blow early in the fight.
‘It’s the other way round,’ he told us. ‘The longer it goes the more certain it becomes that I will be the new champion.
‘And he knows it, knows that as an old man (39) he will be in real trouble in the later rounds. He also knows I’m not coming to win on points, which is very hard for a foreigner to do in Germany. I’m knocking him out.’
Fury, 27, stayed to watch Klitschko go through his paces, saying: ‘Just by looking at him I can see not just his anxiety but his game plan.
‘He is usually patient in his fights but not this Saturday. He will come to attack from the first bell, hoping to put me down early. He knows that’s his only hope. When it doesn’t happen in the first two or three rounds he will know he’s a beaten old man.He knows already that in the betting I’m only a three-and-a-half to one underdog while all his recent opponents have been 16-1. That’s on his mind.’
Once Klitschko had completed his stretching and pad-work he joined in the spirit of the occasion, saying: ‘Thank you for the song Tyson but this is not a singing contest. It’s a boxing match.’
The 11-year world champion and current holder of the WBA, IBF, WBO, IBO and Ring magazine belts again thanked Fury for selling the promotion and added: ‘This will be a very good fight, fought with respect, in a fair manner.’ At which Fury grinned mischievously from his seat at ringside.
He was happy that the controversy over the gloves he is contracted to wear has been resolved.
Klitschko’s manager Bernd Boente declared that a bespoke pair in the alternative design of the Paffen gloves which Tyson has been demanding have been finished by the manufacturers in time and will be available for inspection at the rules meeting following tomorrow’s weigh-in.
Fury’s manager Mick Hennessy said: ‘It’s been resolved but it wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t made a public fuss about it with that row at the press conference.’
Glove-gate then morphed into Shoe-gate as Fury revealed that his footwear for the fight was a present to him from Klitschko’s late, great trainer Manny Steward.
Fury worked briefly under Steward at Detroit’s fabled Kronk gym early in his career and wore the shoes for this workout.
He reminded Klitschko: ‘You’re not the only one who’s been trained by Manny. He gave me these shoes and they’ve been lucky for me in every fight since. They look old and dirty but they are special to me, coming from such a great man. They are sentimental for me.’
Before Steward died, he predicted that Fury would become a dominant world champion.
When that was put to the current heavyweight king, Klitschko said: ‘Yes, Emanuel did say that when he brought him to my training camp to see how a champion works. But then he said that about a lot of my opponents and I beat them all.
‘It was one of his ways of motivating me.’
Fury has not yet decided what to sing in front of a 50,000 crowd in the roofed-in Esprit Arena, if he gets the chance. With another of his cheeky grins, he borrowed from a chant more frequently heard in football stadiums: ‘We only sing when we’re winning.’ – Daily Mail