Tyson Fury remembers when he was the 400-pound elephant in the room.
As he prepares to face off against Deontay Wilder on Feb. 22, the Manchester heavyweight took a moment on social media to remember when he was at rock-bottom, posting a photo depicting him at the absolute nadir of his life – 150 pounds overweight, depressed and utterly lost
He used his misfortune as a cautionary tale.
“When someone says you can’t do something,” Fury wrote, “look at this and remember anything is possible. This is me at over 400lb.”
Grainy though the image is, the rolls of fat around Fury’s midsection are unmistakable, a reminder of the strenuous rehabilitation that he endured over the past couple of years to whip himself back into title contention.
Again, it didn’t look so good for Fury.
After upsetting then-unified heavyweight titleholder Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, Fury fell apart at the seams, unable to handle his newly-wrought fame. His career, or rather his life, quickly descended into a dark morass of cocaine and alcohol binges. It got so bad, he claims, that one night while on the road he tried to take his own life.
Now all that’s in the past, presumably, as Fury has scripted a remarkable turnaround, highlighted by his disputed draw with Wilder in their first fight, in 2018. Fury provided the fight’s most-memorable moment when he came back from a devastating right hand-left hook combination that put him flat on his back. Fury not only beat the count, but he roared back to put Wilder on his backfoot.
The rematch, a joint pay-per-view effort between Fox and ESPN that will take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, figures to be one of the most intriguing bouts of the early 2020 schedule.