However, the sense of Fury’s world collapsing in September 2016 was only heightened by news that Tyson and his cousin and then-training partner Hughie had tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone in 2015.
Both Furys strenuously denied ever taking performance-enhancing drugs and blamed the findings on eating uncastrated wild boar.
The Rolling Stone interview came a month after his scheduled rematch with Klitschko was cancelled. A statement declared Fury to be “medically unfit” to fight and a Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency (VADA) drugs test that showed him to have positive for cocaine.
“What the f*** has that got to do with anything? That ain’t a performance-enhancing drug,” was Fury’s succinct take on the matter, but he would soon be stripped of his WBA and WBO titles – each of which would be hoovered up by Anthony Joshua, much like IBF belt that was taken off him for agreeing to a Klitschko rematch as opposed to a bout with unheralded mandatory Vyacheslav Glazkov.
In the ring in Dusseldorf, the clown became the circus master. Fury was magnificent as he outboxed, perplexed and befuddled Klitschko to take his WBA, WBO and IBF belts via a unanimous decision. It would be the last time he boxed for more than two-and-a-half years.
“I’ve not been in a gym for months. I’ve not been training. I’ve been going through depression. I just don’t want to live anymore, if you know what I’m saying,” Fury told Rolling Stone magazine in an October 2016 interview that remains an utterly harrowing read.
“I’ve had total enough of it. They [the boxing authorities and the media] have forced me to the breaking edge. Never mind cocaine. I just didn’t care. I don’t want to live anymore. So cocaine is a little minor thing compared to not wanting to live anymore.”
During this period, in a 2011 interview with The Guardian, Fury said: “There is a name for what I have, where, one minute I’m happy, and the next minute I’m sad, like commit-suicide-sad. And for no reason – nothing’s changed. One minute I’m over the moon and the next minute I feel like getting in my car and running it into a wall at a hundred miles an hour. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m messed up.”
Under the guidance of his uncle and trainer Peter Fury, Tyson put the pieces together. A slick, switch-hitting version of Fury handed out a comprehensive beating to Dereck Chisora in their second meeting for the European and British heavyweight titles in November 2014.