By Peter Fury: Family. It’s the most important thing to me, it’s life’s beating heart, and it means more than all the world titles a fighter can win.
Today the Fury family grows stronger as my brother, John, is released from prison following a four-and-a-half year sentence. It’s a happy day, a cause for celebration, and I’m just glad we get to have him home. It gives us the chance to put all of this misery behind us. Now we can concentrate on the boxing.
We’re taking this afternoon off and we’ll go out for a meal to celebrate his release. Then we’ll be back in the gym this evening and there’ll be sparring. John will be right in the mix and it will be like he never went away.
He’s going to be working full-time with me here, doing pads, and he’ll be a big asset to us. He can help me out in many different ways.
For example, there’s a lot of lads in the gym and it’s a bit much for me to take them all on the pads at the same time. But I can now split it up a bit, and it’s nice to have a good pad man who knows what he’s doing. It allows me to take a step back, have a proper look at them and then fix anything I see.
Of course, it’s great to work alongside your brother because you’ve got that natural communication. I’ve only got to say, ‘Right, make him slip that shot and come around to the body,’ and John knows exactly what I mean. He can interpret everything I want from a fighter. Sometimes it doesn’t even require words. He just understands what I want and will act on it. He knows where I’m coming from.
This is all going to be a big plus for me because I’ve always seen myself as more of a tactician, a technical strategist, someone who works on different things to allow a fighter to find the range to get their shots off. There’s a lot involved with training, though, so it’s good to now have my brother doing more on the physical side.
When you step up to world level, you need to put all your energy into the technical side of things because that’s what can make the difference. They’re all tough and fit at world level. The great fighters just happen to have that something extra technically.
I’ve always said my dream for Tyson and Hughie is for them to be like the two Klitschkos. Well, they’ve now got two fathers training them and it couldn’t be any better. We’ve got a tight bond, a close family unit, which is exactly what we need to drive them to do great things.
My family is my life. We lost our oldest brother, Hughie, last year and that completely messed us up. We still haven’t got over it. John and I were talking about it only three days ago. Things won’t ever be the same for us. We know that. We lost a part of our family.
We’ve just got to buckle in now and focus on the young ones. It’s all about them now. We’ve got my brother’s son, Dempsey, who is carrying the torch and I can make his father proud through him. I can help him achieve something in his father’s memory. That motivates me, that cheers me up, it keeps me going. If I put all of my efforts into him, I know his father will be looking down on us with a smile.
In fact, before my brother died, we had a conversation and he agreed to come and help train my son, Hughie, while I helped train Dempsey. We were going to share the responsibility. We’d have all been here at the gym together.
That never happened, though. But his son is training here with us now and I’m privileged and honoured to bear that responsibility. Family, for me, is about keeping everyone together as one unit and going forward as a united front.
*** Hughie Fury fights dangerman Andriy Rudenko over ten rounds on February 21 in Monte Carlo, televised by Channel 5. Meanwhile, Tyson Fury defends his WBO International heavyweight title against Christian Hammer on February 28 at the O2 Arena, live on BoxNation ***
