TYSON FURY’S undisputed dream has been driven by a childhood car dealing career and scrubbing his own super fleet despite having millions in the bank.
The 35-year-old WBC Gypsy King flogged his first banger in 1999, flipping the neighbour’s ride for a decent profit.
Even now when his TWO £384,000 Rolls Royce Phantoms, his vintage Bedford TK or his £140,000 Porsche Taycan need a wash, he makes sure he, or one of his sons, sponge and shine the motors to help remember their roots.
A mega-money Saudi Arabia win on Saturday over Ukraine icon and WBA, IBF and WBO boss Oleksandr Usyk will help make Fury the biggest and potentially richest boxing star in 25 years.
But the father-of-seven was a red-hot wheeler dealer years before.
The WBC chief said: “Before I was boxing I was a car trader. While I’ve been boxing I’ve been messing around with cars. It’s my hobby.
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“I love a deal, whether it’s for 10p or 10 grand or 10 million, whatever. I love having a deal.
“My first car was a 1997 Fiat Fiorino. I paid £360 for it. That was my first car that I was driving about in.
“But I actually bought my first car when I was ten-years-old.
“It was a Renault Clio and I bought it from three doors down and I sold it for a profit. I bought it for £60 and sold it for £110 on the same day. So I’ve been buying and selling my whole life.
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“Another lesson I like to do is, in the summertime, we always wash the cars down, maybe every other day.
“I ask the kids why we do it and my little boy will say ‘we wash these because things are hard to earn, dad, and we’ve got to look after our things haven’t we?’ And I say ‘yep, we have, well done son’.”
Fury often flicks on an act for the cameras that can overshadow the more insightful things he says to journalists.
Usyk, 37, has been labelled an ‘ugly little rabbit man’, a ‘s***house’ and a ‘middleweight dosser’.
But hearing Fury talk about his potential two-fight rivalry with the Ukrainian father of four reminds us why this fight — between two undefeated icons — will be fantastic.
Fury said: “As a fighter he’s done everything that can be done so you have to respect him.
“He’s come from Ukraine, I don’t know from what sort of background but probably a poor one. He’s done fantastic, just like Deontay Wilder, Anthony Joshua, Joseph Parker, myself.
“We’ve all done fantastic, we are multimillionaires who changed our stars for the better. You have to respect him and admire him. I don’t really know him as a man because I’ve never been out with him for a beer. But from what I’ve seen he’s a family man.
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TYSON FURY is one of the biggest characters in sport.
“I can 100 per cent sit here and say, me or Usyk, when we sit back and we’re finished, we’re not going to be thinking about some idiot who said it was a good, bad or indifferent fight.
“We give our lives to this game. He’s probably been boxing longer than me, he’s had 315 amateur wins against 15 losses so he’s had a lot of fights, and 20 odd as a pro.
“I don’t think he’ll be bothered what people think of him when he’s getting a fortune on the world’s biggest stage.
“I always say, unless you’ve been a boxer who has won world championships then you can’t run people down.”
It is life lessons like this that Fury is handing down to his boys.
Eldest lad Prince has been snapped in his Riyadh camp and youngest boy Tyson Jr is following in his dad’s giant footsteps back home in Lancashire.
And 20 years from now we could be waiting for another Tyson Fury to rule the boxing world.
Proud dad Fury added: “My little one is seven, Tyson Jr, he’s going to the boxing gym and is fanatical with it all.
“He keeps winning awards every week — boxer of the week or hardest worker of the week.
“I say ‘what did you win it for this week?’ and he says ‘press ups, push ups, sit-ups, padwork and sparring — I outdid everyone’.
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“I say ‘well done son’.”
And if daddy cool can bring all four belts back to Blighty on Sunday morning, we will be saying just the same.
TYSON FURY VS OLEKSANDR USYK: ALL THE DETAILS YOU NEED AHEAD OF HUGE UNDISPUTED HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
