WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury revealed that he nearly retired in the aftermath of last October's trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder.
Before packed crowd in Las Vegas, Fury retained his title with an eleventh round knockout of Wilder.
Fury knocked Wilder down in the third, but then suffered two knockdowns of his own in the fourth round. Fury was able to rally back in the second half to score two more knockdowns before Wilder was down and out in the eleventh.
The 'Gypsy King' explains that he was really rattled from Wilder's punches and feared that he might have suffered a brain injury.
“I knocked him out in round 11, but it wasn’t just hunky dory and let’s all skip back to the changing rooms. I was feeling the back of my head and I had lumps on the back of my head like fists. I didn’t know if I had brain damage, I didn’t know what was up with me," Fury said, according to The Sun.
“I was very frightened because I had these massive swellings on the back of my head. I was thinking, ‘I could end up with brain damage.’ I was concussed, I didn’t remember anything. I suppose when you get knocked down like that you don’t remember a lot. I was thinking, ‘Did I get put down four times?’ I actually got put down twice. I thought to myself, ‘You know what? I think it’s time to call it a day.’ That was after Wilder 3."
However, Fury would eventually decide to take one more fight - a mandatory defense against Dillian Whyte in April - before a crowd of 94,000 at Wembley Stadium in London.
Fury would knock Whyte out in the sixth round. During several interviews that followed the contest, Fury vowed to retire from the sport. At the moment, Fury has not vacated his WBC title and many observers believe he will target the winner of next month's rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua.
