It was while shivering in the car park of Düsseldorf International airport, suitcase in hand, protected from the bitter cold by a coat too big for me, that I realised the Daily Mail and the pre-fight backstabbers were wrong and that Tyson Fury, hidden inside his own XXXL coat, was every inch the heavyweight champion of the world-in-waiting. Earlier, I had watched him pose for photographs with cautious Germans at a baggage carousel – some of whom knew his name and goal, others simply in awe of a giant among mortals – and I had seen him then duck his head and slip inside a large people-carrier along with his father John, uncle Peter, cousin Hughie and advisor Asif. It was Sunday, six days from fight night. The team, set to drastically increase in size as the week progressed, were in town and, Asif aside, were abnormally large physical specimens; bad news for any stragglers. <p><p>“Sorry, there’s no room in the car,” Asif told me, having just finished loading the last of the Furys’ bags into the vehicle’s boot. “But if you wait an hour, there’ll be another one of these (vehicles) on its way.” I stepped back and pulled my hood over my head, thankful for its fur rim. The plan initially, you see, had been to travel with the Furys to the same hotel, but, aware of the size of the task facing them, and aware of the size of the human beings inside the vehicle, I wasn’t going to argue this point. Nor for that matter was I prepared to find a spot in the boot. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait.” So, I did. Asif jumped inside the car, various lights signalled its imminent departure, and I connected my hands and blew in the gap created between them. It was nine o’clock at night, close to freezing, and, with no other option, I braced myself for perhaps the longest hour of my life. It was then, however, a door opened and a large limb came into view. It was a foot, followed by a leg, and both belonged to Tyson Fury. His upper body and face, half of it concealed by a woolly hat, swiftly followed. “Get in here,” he said. “We’ll move some stuff around. You’ll fit.” Taken aback by the gesture, my initial reaction was to say I would happily wait. (It was after all Fury who had a world heavyweight title fight in a matter of days, not me; it was therefore Fury who needed space and minimal fuss.) But Fury was insistent and Asif, eager for them to get moving, had by now taken hold of my bag and suitcase and was finding space for both in the car. After that, I too was shoved inside, squashed between Tyson and Peter, and we were all on our way. For being so generous I was quick to thank them, but Fury, eyes on his phone, shrugged it off as though it had been no decision at all. Relaxed, if tightly packed, he preferred to instead discuss our respective flights, the joys of a relatively short one – “better than going to somewhere like Vegas, eh?” – and his many prior trips to Germany, at least one of which was to train alongside Wladimir Klitschko, his next opponent. Fury, it must be said, was a fan of both Germany and Germans, as I suspected having observed him at baggage claim, but, despite this, was in no rush to stick around and sightsee after the fight. “For some reason I don’t like hanging around after a fight,” he said. “I don’t want to explore the country or do anything like that. I just like to go there, do my job, and leave straight away. If I had a ‘Batmobile’ on standby outside the venue, I’d jump in that and go straight home.” “Maybe it’s because you associate the location with the fight – something that can be a cause of stress for some people,” I suggested. “Not for me,” he said. “I once read that Mike Tyson booked his flight from Tokyo to New York for something like two hours after his fight with (James) ‘Buster’ Douglas. He just couldn’t wait to get out of there. I’m the same.” “It showed the state of his mind…” “He thought it would be an easy fight; a blowout,” said Fury. “Everybody did, didn’t they? But boxing doesn’t work like that. Every dog has its day and that day belonged to ‘Buster’ Douglas.” Muhammad Ali once said that kindness to others is the rent we pay on earth and, whether Tyson Fury was going to that weekend cause one of the biggest heavyweight upsets since Tyson-Douglas or not, he was clearly kind and he was obviously intent on pleasing his landlord. His uncle Peter, meanwhile, who had, I would later learn, prompted his nephew to help me out that night, offered an explanation of his own. “Listen, this is the best version of Tyson you’ll ever see,” he said, sitting in the hotel lobby. “This is the nicest and friendliest he’ll ever be because he’s got something to look forward to and he feels good within himself. He’s fit, he’s healthy, and he’s eating well. But you wait until the fight is over and he’s been home a few days. That’s a different Tyson altogether. It’s hard being around that Tyson.” Wladimir Klitschko and Tyson Fury (ROBERTO PFEIL/AFP via Getty Images) The next day Tyson sat down for breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant alongside his cousin, Hughie, who was nursing an untimely cold and struggling to breathe through his nose. Sitting opposite him, but perhaps not as far away as he should have been, Tyson at one point caught the attention of a waitress and said, “I’d like some porridge, please,” before then looking towards Hughie’s bowl. “But not like his.” For context, Hughie’s porridge was best described as a lumpy take on an old tradition and evidently not to Tyson’s liking. “I’d like it smooth, not lumpy,” Tyson explained to the waitress. “And could I have semi-skimmed milk instead of that soya milk stuff? I don’t know how you eat that, Hughie.” Hughie shrugged. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks red and his nose swollen, and it’s unlikely he even knew what he was in that moment eating. “You look awful,” Tyson offered by way of reassurance. “Make sure you stay away from me, okay?” The porridge returned minutes later and Tyson inspected it as though it were a pair of Paffen boxing gloves. A frown then stretched across his brow. “It’s still a bit too lumpy,” he said. “Can I have it smoother?” “I’m sorry,” said the waitress, and off she went. When returning a second time there appeared to now be a different problem. “It’s cold,” Tyson said. “Can you heat it up again? Maybe for a couple more minutes…” “I’m so sorry,” said the waitress, and with her gone once more Tyson turned to Hughie. “We should be careful what we eat in here, shouldn’t we?” he said. “We probably shouldn’t even be eating here actually.” “Why’s that?” said Hughie, his face a picture of innocence. “The Klitschko camp could try to slip us something in our food.” “Oh, right.” “They could give me something that makes me box rubbish on the night.” Soon enough the porridge was back. “I’m sorry for the wait,” said the waitress. “Don’t be sorry,” said Tyson, smiling at her. “It’s our fault we don’t speak German.” As a team – that is, as a family – the Furys would throughout the week make a habit of sitting at the back of the hotel’s restaurant gorging on breakfast, lunch and dinner, and whenever they did you could hear the bellowing voice of John Fury from as far away as the lobby. What’s more, from what I could gather from a distance, the conversations around the table were seemingly forever centred on boxing and boxers – they spoke of little else – and the focus got narrower still when now and again they would discuss Wladimir Klitschko. With no fear of the man, clearly, they would each take it in turns to dissect and disregard his record, analysing in great detail previous opponents…
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