British heavyweight Tyson Fury, who challenges Wladimir Klitschko on Saturday, is the living embodiment of Mickey O'Neil, the unhinged gypsy boxer played by Brad Pitt in Guy Ritchie's 2000 film 'Snatch'.
Fury's clash with Klitschko, initially slated for October 24, was postponed after the 39-year-old WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO title-holder tore a tendon in his calf.
It has given Fury, the 27-year-old showman from the gypsy community with the most evocative name in boxing, an extra month to raise the temperature around the ice-cold Ukrainian.
"You may have fought plenty of peasants in your time, from Poland or wherever, but you've not fought the king of the gypsies before. You're looking at one here," Fury told Klitschko during a September press conference, having earlier emerged dressed as Batman and staged a fight with an accomplice disguised as Robin.
"You're an old man, you're getting knocked out. I can't wait, I cannot wait for this," Fury added.
"I'm as confident of winning as waking up in the morning and putting my shoes on. That's how this fight's going to go. A very sharp, easy, simple knockout. I'll put him to bed in the sixth round."
Cocky, outspoken and shaven-headed, the giant, 6' 9" (2.06m) Fury is unbeaten in 24 fights, 18 of which have failed to go the distance, and relishes the sense of spectacle that accompanies a fight.
"I'm a Gypsy fighter and that means I will never turn away from a proper fight," he told The Independent in 2011. "I don't mean a fat idiot on a (travellers') site somewhere.
"They get a few beers in them and they start thinking they are Tyson or Ali; throwing punches, swearing and jumping around with their big fat bellies. I'd love to knock a few of them out."
On his roots, he has said: "You are born a traveller. You can't make out you're a traveller just like you can't make out that you are black.
"It's my life and it's what I am and even if I had £10 million, I could still sleep in a caravan."
