‘My relationship with Tyson is destroyed COMPLETELY’: Emotional John Fury reveals breakdown with his son and wants NO part of his boxing return after Gypsy King’s retirement U-turn

The road narrows as if you were sliding off the map, the hedges closed and the view suddenly opened up to a bare field. There’s no grand entrance, no hint that one of boxing’s best-known names lives here, just a fire blazing against the cold, a pot boiling on the makeshift stove, and John Fury waiting.

Within minutes, before the tea is finished or the cameras are on track, he delivers the sentence that defines everything: His relationship with his son, Tyson Fury, is ‘totally ruined’.

He will not be in the fight against Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11. Won’t watch. He believes that Tyson is no longer the “gone” fighter he once was since the trilogy with Deontay Wilder, and is adamant that the blame lies with those around him.

What emerges in the next hour is not just an interview ahead of his heavyweight return, but a father who reveals the collapse of one of boxing’s most famous relationships, with all the pain, regret and enduring love.

There’s something completely appropriate about the setting. John Fury lives almost defiantly simply. He explains that the food bubbling next to him—chicken, kale, broccoli, carrots, onions, and a handful of other indistinguishable ingredients—is what he eats three times a day.

There is no salt. There is no spice. Fuel, not pleasure. Sometimes she allows porridge with nuts, honey, ginger and garlic for breakfast. Ice cream ‘for candy’ on weekends. Two pints of Guinness every Friday ‘for the iron’.

Gypsy King’s father wants no part in his son’s return to the boxing ring

30 horses are wandering around, chickens are scratching the ground, sheep are dragging in the field. It’s a life stripped down to the essentials, away from the multi-million pound spectacle his son now lives.

But as he talks, it becomes clear that physical and emotional distance is exactly the point.

‘My relationship with Tyson is ruined,’ he said Playbook Boxing. ‘Boxing completely destroyed him. I’ll say this on camera: I’ve never taken £10 from him in my life and I never will.

‘I don’t want Tyson’s money and I don’t need Tyson’s money. Good luck to him no matter what he gets. But don’t forget who set up his story as a child. He didn’t build this, did he? I’m his father.”

It is this feeling of having created something extraordinary that cuts so deeply into the current alienation.

And yet, for all the power in his words, there are moments when appearances shake. As he progresses into conversational relationships, his eyes become red, his voice becomes harsher, and for a brief moment it seems as if he is about to stop completely.

‘I was 30 seconds away from calling a break there. “I haven’t really expressed these feelings before, but they’re strong and they’re there,” she admits.

This is a striking contrast to the man who often roars at press conferences, turning tables, propositioning people and loudly commanding attention.

John Fury photographed with Tyson Fury ahead of his press conference with Arslanbek Makhmudov

The Gypsy King will face Makhmudov at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on April 11

Here, in the silence of Mobberley, emotion is not performative. It’s contained, but only just.

What follows is a relentless, unfiltered assessment; not just Tyson’s current status in the sport, but also the decisions that, in John’s opinion, got him here.

‘I think he did the best he could. I’m a man with no filter; I say it the way I see it. I love him, but there are too many people patting him on the back, telling him things that aren’t true, and empowering him as if he were invincible. It’s not, and hasn’t been for a while.

‘Tyson is gone since the Deontay Wilder fights, they’re done with him. Wilder completely finished him off. It doesn’t have a leg underneath it. He took a lot from Tyson. Makhmudov is a problem for Tyson. I’m the first to say this.

‘Listen, now I understand that Tyson is testing himself. But now I can tell you that his legs are not there anymore. I understand that the only way he will believe it and see it is if the first bell rings.’

According to John, the damage is both physical and irreversible. He argues that three fights with one of the hardest punchers in heavyweight history is something no amount of training camp can bring back.

However, it’s important to note that John wasn’t involved in Tyson’s training camp for this fight, so he wasn’t able to see how his current training was going.

‘Tyson was a tough guy but when you fight three times with one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, it takes something out of you that you can never get back. You can’t restore that warehouse to its former state. And every shot he takes matters.

‘Remember, he went down four times in the last fight; very big, heavy punches. He fought his heart out, went to the absolute limit and gave everything he had to get that knockout. But when he took it, he had nothing left.

John says he begged Tyson to avoid fighting Oleksandr Usyk (pictured above)

He was constantly by his son’s side and claimed he helped ‘build’ his career

‘He risked everything. He even said himself that he was ready to die there if it came to that point. That’s the mentality he had: willing to risk everything in the ring.’

Besides the flattering aspect of this memory, there’s also something else: the lingering question of whether it’s worth it.

This question underlies much of the frustration with what has happened since.

While the Wilder trilogy marked the beginning of the decline, John believes the trajectory of Tyson’s career has accelerated it.

Fury was photographed with his wife Paris and his extended family. The couple has seven children

This feeling of displacement is at the root of the separation between father and son. John repeatedly speaks of respect being expected rather than demanded, especially when he believes he is acting in Tyson’s best interest.

‘If you can’t respect your father when it matters, move on,’ he says. ‘I don’t need you.’ However, the act of saying this reveals the exact opposite. He needs her financially, not professionally, but emotionally, in a way that’s harder to express.

‘He trusted their word more than mine,’ says John. ‘And it consumed me more than I can explain.’

Conflicts themselves are not new. John recalled the ‘furious debacle’ that saw Tyson suffer before his first fight with Oleksandr Usyk, insisting that he begged his son not to accept it under the circumstances.

He outlines the timeline with the precision of someone who’s done it over and over again: a full training camp, a late cut, a poor recovery, and then another grueling stretch of preparation.

‘I’ll tell you this, you should never have gotten into the fight with Usyk. I begged and prayed to him before the first fight. He had already gone through a full training camp and got injured last week. He was worn out from camp. You can’t just rest for three weeks and then go straight to another seven weeks; That’s what happens.

‘I said take two weeks. His Excellency was going to fine us £10 million to withdraw from the fight and I said yes. Give yourself four months, rest well, and then we’ll go again. But no, what does he do after the fight? He immediately puts himself through another seven or eight weeks of camp, as weak as anything else.

‘I thought if we didn’t get this done quickly, it would fade away over time. So my plan was to make it awkward; to keep moving, to keep spinning it, to disturb everything. Don’t stay in one position because it will catch up with you. It’s fast, it’s as sharp as anything. The moment you stop moving, the moment your feet slow down, your work is done.

Fury unhappy with son’s preparations for Usyk fight and says he could ‘choke out’ Sugar Steward

‘And I was worried; Do you still have your legs? And it showed. To take down Tyson, you almost have to kill him. He got injured in the ninth round, but he didn’t fall, right? A tremendous heart – an incredible heart.

‘But did we really need to put a great champion through this process? I was disgusted with myself. Then I wanted to strangle Sugar; I wanted to get him out of my corner. Going in there with a southpaw like that… if it wasn’t for me, he would have knocked him out.

‘Do you know what Sugar’s instructions were in the tenth round? Get your hind leg up there, go and get him out. I said he doesn’t have legs underneath, don’t do this. He has no strength left. Get on your bike, get behind your coup, just step over it and get your legs back.

‘Wasn’t that sound advice?

‘If I hadn’t been in that corner he would have thrown big punches trying to knock him out in the tenth round. What kind of nonsense is this? What kind of Kronk-style nonsense is this?

‘He’s not an Emanuel Steward, he’s nothing like him. He’s just a gym sweeper, that’s all he did, living off his grandfather’s name or whoever it was. He arrived here without even having £25 for his plane ticket. And now you’re a multimillionaire, a two-time world champion, and someone like that, someone with nothing, knocks on your door and says, ‘Let me take over your whole career,’ and you say yes.

‘This is what happened.’

And yet, despite everything, John does not foresee disaster. He admits that Tyson could well beat Makhmudov and might even look ‘sensational’. But the certainty that once surrounded his son has been replaced by doubt. ‘There is always this risk,’ he says.

‘He’s 38 years old, hasn’t been in the ring for 18 months and people are filling his head with nonsense.’ His assessment of a third fight with Usyk is equally bleak. ‘Nothing will change,’ he says. ‘Tyson is getting weaker and Usyk is getting stronger.

‘All I told him was: If I was in his corner and he got into trouble, he wouldn’t have died. But if he gets into trouble with them in his corner, he could die or suffer lifelong brain damage. Because when your legs are gone, you need someone to save you.

‘They won’t do this. They won’t throw in the towel. They won’t pull him out. Their egos are bigger than Tyson, bigger than the fight itself. And that’s how people get seriously injured in this game. You’ve seen this before; One shot, explosion and it’s over. It could be just like that. It’s a dangerous sport.

‘All I’m saying is let them get on with it. I don’t want anything. I have this place, I have my own house, I have had this for 40 years. Mine. I don’t owe anything to anyone. ‘I’m living my own life.’

As the interview draws to a close, the contradictions that define John Fury become impossible to ignore. She insists her relationship with Tyson is beyond repair: ‘No. It’s his own fault’ – yet he talks about her with a level of detail and intensity that suggests otherwise.

He claims he doesn’t want anything, but he can’t hide how much has been lost. He presents himself as detached, living on his own field in Mobberley, owing nothing to anyone, but remaining emotionally attached to a world he says he has left behind.

INTERVIEW BY PLAYBOOK BOXING SUPPORTED BY BETWAY.