GYPSY King Tyson Fury put on a brave face after losing his unbeaten record to Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.
“I’m going to go home, eat some food, drink some beers, have some family time, walk the dog, go to the tip,” he told the media after 12 punishing rounds.
And who can blame him? After all, he added £80million to his already substantial fortune — that buys a lot of sticks of Morecambe rock.
He never needs to step in a ring again.
But anyone who watched the compelling, fly-on-the-wall Netflix series At Home With The Furys will know that this attempt to brush off the defeat by throwing himself back in to “normal” family life will last all of five seconds before he’s climbing the walls with agitation.
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
Not least because, as we saw in the series when he was supposedly “retired”, as soon as he loses sporting purpose and stops training, his fragile mental health puts him on the ropes in a way that no boxing opponent ever could.
And who always bears the full brunt of the inevitable downward spiral? His loyal wife Paris, mother of his seven children.
They met when they were teenagers and, without her support and ability to centre him, he’d probably have self-destructed long ago.
She has always been brutally honest that, sometimes, life with Tyson is like having a 6ft 9in toddler to deal with. But her adoration is total and she has unswerving loyalty.
Forget his trainer SugarHill Steward, his ever-present dad John or even boxing promoter Frank Warren — Paris is the real power behind the Gypsy King’s throne.
They met when they were teenagers and, without her support and ability to centre him, he’d probably have self-destructed long ago.
Elite sportsmen are relentlessly driven creatures with blinkered ambition and selfishness at their core. Without it, they wouldn’t be at the top of their chosen game.
Selfless soul
Fury’s opponent Usyk, for example, was away at a training camp for nine months before the fight, and says: “I missed Happy New Year, I missed my son’s birthday, I missed my daughter’s birthday and then the birth of my daughter.”
So it takes a very selfless soul to cope with being married to an elite athlete, as well as the fallout when injury or age means they eventually have to stop doing what they love.
He is now 35, his body isn’t as resilient as it used to be, and surely the next time he retires it will have to be for good?
How to de-clutter if you have a beauty stash to last you a lifetime
Right now, Tyson says he is contemplating a possible rematch with Usyk in October, which means the prospect of potentially regaining his world heavyweight title may keep him focused and energised in the short term.
But in the long term?
He is now 35, his body isn’t as resilient as it used to be, and surely the next time he retires it will have to be for good?
Brace yourself, Paris. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Mel cold front over Stormy
MELANIA TRUMP has been absent from husband Donald Trump’s trial for alleged business fraud.
Hardly surprising, given the lurid details emerging about his reported fling with former porn star Stormy Daniels.
But on Friday, the couple put on a united front at their son Barron’s High School graduation in West Palm Beach, Florida.
So here’s the former First Lady standing by her man – though her expression might suggest it’s more in body than spirit.
Bojo's timely turn
PM Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murty’s personal fortune has ballooned by £122million to £651million since last year, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Which, with many voters struggling to pay their bills, isn’t great optics as a general election looms.
Meanwhile, former PM and rumoured comeback kid Boris Johnson has been spotted at bargain store B&M, dressed in his usual array of scruffy, mismatched clothes and driving an old Toyota Previa.
“You expect to see people like that in flash cars,” says the shopper who spotted him.
Indeed you do.
I’m sure it was entirely coincidental that, on the very same day we were being reminded of Rishi’s eye-popping wealth, Boris was out showing us that he’s a “man of the people”.
Beeb's shame
PRINCESS Diana’s former chauffeur has settled a High Court slander case against the BBC.
Stephen Davies has received an unspecified sum after a document revealed that the Beeb’s former employee, Martin Bashir, told Diana and her brother Charles Spencer that her driver was leaking stories to the press.
It was a blatant lie designed to persuade her to be interviewed by the now disgraced reporter for Panorama.
Similarly, in 2022, the Corporation paid £100k to Diana’s former private secretary Patrick Jephson, who found himself frozen out by Diana after Bashir told her that her right hand man had been selling stories about her.
“I have spent the past 25 years wondering what I’d done wrong because I assumed, wrongly, that I must have done something wrong,” he said at the time. He added that he found it very hard to process the fact that “she died thinking I had betrayed her . . . ”
Stephen Davies will no doubt be feeling the same way and, sadly, no amount of money will change that.
ANNETTE BOND, from Scotland, has been jailed for two years after a decade of claiming “enhanced” benefit payments she didn’t need.
Despite claiming she could barely stand, the 50-year-old was secretly filmed doing 5km runs up to four times a week.
How odd. After all, if you’ve got the energy to sprint 20km a week, why not channel it in to finding a job?
Kyle's role goal
MAN City defender Kyle Walker celebrated his team’s Premier League win by bringing his four sons with wife Annie Kilner on to the pitch.
Including the youngest, one month-old Rezon, born eight months after the second child he fathered during a fling with influencer Lauryn Goodman.
He’s reportedly fighting to save his marriage to Annie, who brought their boys to the Etihad Stadium to see dad’s win – admirably placing her sons’ relationship with their father above what must surely be her own emotional turmoil about the messy situation.
As Kyle plants a kiss on the head of his innocent and vulnerable newborn, one wonders if he knows how lucky he is to have the opportunity.
And that being a role model to your children involves far more than just sporting prowess.
Japanese academic Professor Nana Sato-Rossberg took the School of Oriental and African Studies to a tribunal for “racial discrimination” and “harassment” after one of her colleagues told her about a sushi restaurant she enjoyed.
Professor Sato-Rossberg took exception to the remark, and said they wouldn’t have told a German person: “I like sausage.” Rejecting the case, the judge ruled the comment was part of varied small talk and the complainant was “predisposed to see race discrimination . . . when there was none”.
Common sense has finally prevailed, but sadly not before the poor woman she wrongly accused has no doubt suffered two years of sleepless nights.
Olden haze…
THINGS that make me feel old: Part 4058.
Abba won Eurovision 50 years ago, the movie Four Weddings And A Funeral (feels like yesterday) has just celebrated its 30th birthday, and the name Nigel (half the boys in my class) is now extinct along with Greg (the other half) Carol, Maureen and Brenda.
Janet, Gary, Karen and Rodney are among those on the endangered list, and Jane may soon be joining them, given that only 0.0797 per cent of babies born in 2022 were given the name.
Sigh. Show me a Jane, Jackie, Julie, Sue, Debbie, Karen, Wendy or Louise and, chances are, they’re Baby Boomers like me.
And we dated Nigels, Ians, Steves, Gregs, Simons, Garys and Phils.
All now as endangered as my current love life.
LABOUR Health Secretary Wes Streeting shouldn’t worry too much about fluffing Sir Keir Starmer’s six pledges on the Laura Kuenssberg show.
They will probably have changed by next week anyway.
