Tyson Fury has revealed he was struck by personal tragedy on the eve of his first fight with Oleksandr Usyk, before only learning of his wife’s miscarriage when he returned home.
Paris Fury was six months pregnant with the couple’s eighth child – a boy – but miscarried the day before her husband lost his WBC world heavyweight title to Usyk in Saudi Arabia in May.
Speaking on the subject for the first time, at the launch press conference for the Fury vs Usyk rematch on December 21, the British boxer said he was shielded from the news ahead of his bid to become the division’s first undisputed champion for 24 years.
Fury said: “The [child] that she was having, she lost that on the Friday of the fight, which was pretty s****y. She was six months pregnant. It’s not like a small miscarriage at the beginning.
“You have to physically give birth to a dead child, on your own, while your husband is in a foreign country. To go through that on your own isn’t good.
“I could not be there for her in that moment. And that’s tough for me. I have been with the woman for longer than I wasn’t with her, so it’s hard that I couldn’t be there with her in that time.
“When she said she couldn’t come over, I knew there was a problem. She usually comes out on fight week but she said she had high blood pressure.
“Turki Alalshikh (chairman of Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority) offered us a private jet to get around the high blood pressure and said she could bring the doctor with her.
“She said she couldn’t come. I asked her what was up and asked her to tell me, but she wouldn’t. So I knew, I knew, I knew there was a problem.
“I said to my brother ‘she’s lost that baby’. She never told me she had lost the baby, but I knew. When I got back I got the inevitable confirmation that it was gone, but she had kept it to herself.”
Usyk and Fury embraced after the fight in Riyadh this spring
Fury insists the situation had no bearing on his clash with Usyk, which was won by the Ukrainian on split decision.
He added: “It’s not an excuse – hell no. I am a man of honour. I do what I have to do when I am in there. I don’t think about that sort of stuff when I am in that fight.
“Nothing outside the ring matters, there is no emotion. You think about all that stuff afterwards.
“We have had miscarriages before. It happens. Will we have any more kids? I don’t know if she’s back to normal from that, it was only a few months ago. It takes a lot of getting over.
“But no more of this morbid stuff now because I’ll break down in tears.”
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