Tyson Fury says that Dillian Whyte did not show up at Tuesday’s press conference is a sign that he “has already got in his head”.
Whyte was a no-show for the press conference at Wembley Stadium where the two will battle for Fury’s WBC heavyweight title on April 23, deciding instead to remain at his training camp in Portugal.
There was a place card printed out in Whyte’s name on the off chance that he might turn up. But Whyte stuck by his threat not to help promote the show.
“For him not coming here, it shows I have already git in his head,” Fury said. “He’s already lost.
“I think there is a lot of stuff going on in the background where he is more worried about what he is getting then winning the fight. When I was fighting Klitschko, I wasn’t thinking about money, I was only thinking about the fight, I just wanted to beat Klitschko. And he is getting seven times what I got fighting Klitschko.”
Fury, though, does not really believe he needed Whyte there to help with promotion.
“I’m not concerned because this is the Tyson Fury roadshow,” he said. “The next stop is London. It’s never about the opponent.
“He has shown the white flag today. All this social media stuff ‘I’m not promoting the fight, I’m not getting involved in mind games’. He doesn’t want to go face to face with me because he will see the fire in my eyes and think he’s getting killed. It’s fear, it’s terror.
“But the build-up to this fight will be fantastic because Tyson Fury versus his own shadow sells. I will make sure that people are entertained.”
Tickets for Fury’s first fight in the UK in nearly four years go on sale at noon today, with Fury emphasizing that this might be the last chance for British fans to see him live, even going so far as to claim in one interview that he was about to retire.
“This is the final fight of my career, I’m retiring after this. $150 million in the bank, healthy, young, I'm going to buy a massive yacht abroad. I’m retiring, I’m out, this is my final fight, I’m done,” he said.
Fury’s retirement predictions have been as regular as his fights over the years, but while it is unlikely that the end is that close, he said he did not have much time left.
“I’m 34 years old, most of the greats were already finished at this age,” he said. “So, I don’t have a long career in front of me.
“I always said I was not interested in how people rated me compared to the fighters of the past. When I finish with boxing, it is done for me, I don’t care what people think.
“People say about me ‘he’s a down to earth fella’, I’m not, I’m an on top of the world fella. Even when I have been a heavy underdog I have not had the fear of losing. I will never let that go away from me I am supremely confident in my own ability.
“For me this is just another fight. If I cannot look like Muhammad Ali fighting this guy, I never will. I can beat him with one hand tied behind my back and one foot off the floor.
“I can’t see it going past six rounds.”
Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.