The nine lives of Tyson Fury
More than a decade after his first retirement, and less than two years after his latest, the enigmatic former heavyweight champion is back once again this Saturday on Netflix.
It was a plan devised in a branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken, then executed inside a boxing gym beneath a railway arch; the murmurs of skeptics drowned out by the sound of trains. We were in London — Vauxhall, to be precise — on the exact day it was meant to happen: Oct. 13, 2011.
That was the date both the fighter and his coach had had in mind when, a decade ago, they ate fried chicken and crafted their exit plan. Now nothing, not even regret, would stop the fighter’s hunger to see it through and say, “That’s all, folks. I’m out.
” By doing so the fighter could convince both himself and others of his control, his power, his intelligence. He could, by retiring when he said he would, demonstrate that he was different from — better than — those boxers who continued to smash buttons when seeing GAME OVER on the screen. Retirement, after all, was the biggest fight of the lot, they said.
Only the smartest ever got it right. That day in Vauxhall, “I told you so” was the message the fighter wished to send to all at his party. He had just turned 31 and had always vowed he would never fight beyond the age of 30.
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