Tyson Fury Opens Up About Cutting Off Communication with Wife Paris for Three Months Before Usyk Rematch.
Tyson Fury, the former heavyweight boxing champion, has revealed that he has not spoken to his wife, Paris, in the past three months as he prepares for his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk. The two fighters will meet for the second time this Saturday, following a points loss for Fury in May.
The British boxer has been fully focused on his training camp and, as part of his dedication, has blocked contact with everyone, including his wife and children. In an interview with TNT Sports presenter Dev Sahni, Fury shared, “It’s been a long camp. Been away from my wife and kids for three months, I’ve not spoken to Paris at all for three months, not one word. Yeah, I’ve sacrificed a lot.”
Sahni noted that Fury’s sacrifices would pay off if he won the rematch, to which Fury responded, “It will be worth it, 100 percent.”
Fury and Paris, who have been married since 2008, share seven children. Paris is usually present at ringside during Fury’s fights, but she was absent for the first Usyk fight earlier this year. Fury later revealed that Paris had suffered a miscarriage the night before the fight, although she did not tell him until after the match.
Fury explained that he knew something was wrong when Paris said she couldn’t attend the fight due to high blood pressure. “When she said she couldn’t come over, I knew there was a problem. She usually comes out on fight week but she said she had high blood pressure. I knew she wasn’t coming over on the Friday and [Saudi boxing chief] Turki Alalshikh offered us a private jet to get her there, with a doctor to help.”
Fury said that despite his concerns, Paris wouldn’t tell him the full truth, but he figured out the situation. “I said to my brother, ‘She’s lost that baby.’ She never told me she had lost the baby, but I knew.” Fury admitted that it was a tough experience, saying, “It’s not like a small miscarriage at the beginning, you have to physically give birth to a dead child, on your own, while your husband is in a foreign country. I could not be there for her in that moment, and that is tough for me. To go through that on your own, that isn’t good.”
The Fury family has faced heartbreak before. In 2014, Paris gave birth to a stillborn child, and in 2018, she miscarried again. That same day, Tyson made his return to the ring after a three-year hiatus, defeating Sefer Seferi. Paris didn’t tell him about the miscarriage until after the fight.
While Fury has maintained that the miscarriage did not affect his performance against Usyk, his trainer Andy Lee believes it had an impact. “Tyson never mentioned it. He never mentioned it once but he was very quiet. Even the day of the fight, in the afternoon, it must have been about 6 or 7 pm, we went for a walk, and he was very quiet,” Lee recalled.
Lee continued, “If you watch the fight back, before the fight he wasn’t really himself. Usually, he’s quite within himself. All of those little things that were going on in the build-up to the fight maybe were playing on his mind, or maybe just having that bit of anxiety about him.”
Now, with his rematch against Usyk just days away in Saudi Arabia, Fury is channeling all his energy into the fight. Having gone through immense personal and emotional challenges, Fury is determined to give his all in what could be the most important fight of his career.