“He winged him from the back row. You’ve got to give him credit. I thought, ‘You stuffin’ fucker!’” - Ricky Hatton on Deontay Wilder felling Tyson Fury
Times Select
TELFORD VICE in London
THE eyes have it. If you want to see the truth, look it in the face. There, in the untainted eyes, lies cannot live long enough for their poison to take hold. This is as valid in sport as it is in life. But in sport we enjoy the luxury of respecting and admiring truth without having to fear its consequences.
Not all sports are so blessed. Not often in football does a pair of eyes meet another meaningfully, especially if they are playing for the other team. Even goalkeepers hovering on their line as the ball sits primed and ticking on the penalty spot are looking everywhere but in their eyes of the approaching opponent, who is also otherwise eyeccupied.
Rugby players size each other up from a distance, but by the time the tackler’s shoulder meets the ball-carrier’s whatever, one pair of eyes is closed and braced for impact and the other looking for a teammate near enough to take the offload.
Batters and bowlers face each other, as do tennis players. But the latter watch the ball and each other’s positioning, not their eyes, and the last thing a batter wants to look into, standing at the crease and tensed and torqued for the next delivery, is the fire in the face of a fast bowler flying in on the wings of malevolence.
But the truth was writ large in Los Angeles at the weekend, when Tyson Fury came back from the beckoning chasm of a life lived dangerously — even by boxing standards — to earn a split draw in his unarguably epic fight with Deontay Wilder.
Truth also loomed at the World Chess Championship in London last week, where Magnus Carlsen prevailed over Fabiano Caruana. It took 51 hours of play, a dozen draws and a knockout round — something Wilder reached for but failed to grasp despite felling Fury in the ninth and the 12th — to get there.
“I felt like I had a very good day at work today,” the insufferably smug Carlsen said in a moment that cried out for the truth of a punch from Wilder or Fury or anyone to knock the arrogance askew.
They had no chance of being hit by an airborne pawn, much less a ball, but Carlsen and Caruana spent their time at the board trying like hell not to look into each other’s eyes, as if to do so might expose their humanity: the greatest truth of them all.
There’s no prospect of that happening in the most honest sport of them all, where to take your eyes off your opponent guarantees defeat and invites serious injury. Or worse.
“I don’t know how he got up,” Wilder admitted, having shared the incredulity of the pay-per-view watching world when Fury, all 2.06 metres and 117 kilogrammes of him, rose unsteadily at the count of nine in the final round. Not only did he get up, he fought like the hard bastard he is for the remaining two minutes of the best showdown the heavyweight division has had since the days of fellas called Ali, Frazier and Foreman.
“I saw his eyes roll back in his head,” Wilder said. “I was like, ‘It’s over’.”
Ah, the eyes. Sometimes, it seems, they don’t tell the truth. Or did they roll far enough back in Fury’s head after it thunked into the canvas to give him a look at the two-and-a-half years in which he had been out of the ring.
He was stripped of two world titles and relinquished two more and banned from boxing. He became addicted to drugs, battled mental illness, seriously considered driving his Ferrari into a stone bridge, and gained — then lost — 62 kilogrammes of ugly weight.
That’s a lot of truth. Enough to make finding his feet despite the vicious right then left Wilder smashed into his head, then danced away drawing a gloved thumb across his own throat, no big deal.
Sometimes even you don’t understand your truth. Instead, you just do it. Like Fury did on Saturday: “How did I get up? I don’t know. I had a holy hand on me tonight.”
Ricky Hatton, the former world champion who has taken a straighter road through the truths of life than many boxers, was in Fury’s corner and knew he had seen something like a miracle, as he told the BBC in priceless stream of consciousness: “All champions are hard to beat but an undefeated champion [Wilder] doesn’t know he can be beat. He’s never tasted defeat. He doesn’t know what being defeated even feels like.
“So, y’know … The first knockdown, he knocked him down, and then Tyson came back with a vengeance next round; came back really positive. I’ll bet he must have sat on his stool — Wilder — and felt as sick as a chocolate frog.
“And the second knockdown, he took a run-up with that right hand. He winged him from the back row. You’ve got to give him credit. I thought, ‘You stuffin’ fucker!’.”
Ben Davison, Fury’s trainer, was beyond swearing about the scorecard handed in by Alejandro Rochin, the only judge who gave the fight to Wilder: “They took away the biggest comeback, not just in boxing history but in sports history. You’ve got to be a sick man to do that. A sick, sick man.”
Fury was anything but sick at his presser, which he attended wearing red pants, a pink jacket and a madly floral shirt and matching pocket square.
He answered every question put to him with a champion’s panache and left with a theatrical mic drop. But before he went he stood to cajole all present into joining him in a roaring chorus of Don McLean’s famous song of truths that, 47 years after they warbled into the world, are still being disputed and disbelieved.
“Well, bye, bye Miss American Pie,
“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry,
“Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye,
“Singin’ this'll be the day that I die …”
Fury drove his Ferrari to the bridge, but his well of darkness was dry and he didn’t die.
Instead his eyes saw a life worth living, a life lived more raw and richly than many in sport and far beyond.
Ain’t that the truth.
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