BY DECLAN TAYLOR
TYSON FURY has revealed that his wife Paris suffered a miscarriage on the eve of his undisputed world heavyweight title fight against Oleksandr Usyk.
But it was the measure of the man that he refused to use the tragic loss of his baby son as an excuse for the defeat he suffered in Riyadh.
Fury and Usyk met for all the belts at the Kingdom Arena on May 18 and the Ukrainian claimed a narrow split decision after a rollercoaster fight during which both men were hurt.
However, missing from ringside was Fury’s pregnant wife Paris, who is usually present whenever her husband fights. And now the 36-year-old has opened up on why Paris, the mother of his seven children, could not make it out to Riyadh.
“The baby that she was having, she lost that on the Friday of the fight, which was pretty shitty,” he said.
“I am not making excuses but 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.
“I could not be there for her in that moment and that is tough for me. I have been with the woman for longer than I wasn’t with her, so it is hard that I couldn’t be there with her in that time.”
Paris had been due to fly out and support Tyson but alarm bells started ringing for the then-undefeated heavyweight champion when she suddenly revealed she would not be able to travel due to high blood pressure.
“When she said she couldn’t come over, I knew there was a problem,” he added. “She usually comes out on fight week but she said she had high blood pressure. She said she couldn’t come and 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 kept it to herself.“I knew she wasn’t coming over on the Friday and Turki [Al-Alshikh] offered us a private jet to get around the high blood pressure and said he would bring the doctor with her.
But when I knew she couldn’t fly, I knew there was a big problem.”
However it must be pointed out that Fury was adamant that he was not trying to find an excuse for losing to Usyk. The pair are now due to meet in their contracted rematch on December 21 back in Riyadh.
Fury said: “But 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 and it happens. Will we have any more kids? I don’t know if she’s back to normal from that, only a few months ago, it takes a lot of getting over. It was a boy.
“But no more of this morbid stuff now because I’ll break down in tears.”