John Fury says relationship with son Tyson Fury is ‘destroyed’

The rift between Tyson Fury and his father, John Fury, persists. This week, John claimed his relationship with Tyson has combusted.

“My relationship with Tyson is destroyed,” John told Playbook Boxing.

John, Tyson’s longtime mentor, had an increasingly diminished role in Tyson’s corner in recent years. John claims that he advised Tyson not to take the fights with Oleksandr Usyk after the damage he took against Deontay Wilder.

“I think he’s past his best,” John said. “I’m a no-filter kind of guy — I say it how I see it. I love him, but there are too many people patting him on the back and telling him things that aren’t true, building him up like he’s invincible. He’s not, and he hasn’t been for a while.

“I felt like strangling Sugar afterwards,” John said of Tyson’s fights with Usyk. “He’s no Emanuel Steward — he’s nothing like him. He’s just a gym sweeper, that’s all he ever was.”

Tyson, the former unified heavyweight champion, is preparing to fight Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11. “The Gipsy King” will compete for the first time in 16 months after consecutive losses to Usyk.

John takes issue with how Tyson has managed his career. John claimed he advised his son against taking the first fight with Usyk in May 2024, and pushed back against the immediate rematch seven months later.

“I begged and prayed with him before the first fight,” John said. “He’d already been through a full training camp, and then he got cut in the last week. He was worn out from that camp. You can’t just have three weeks’ rest and then go straight into another seven weeks — that’s what happened.

“‘I said, take two weeks. His Excellency [Turki Alalshikh] was going to give us a £10 million ($13 million U.S.) fine to pull out of the fight, and I said take it. Give yourself four months, rest properly, then we’ll go again. But no, after the fight, what does he do? Puts himself straight back into another seven or eight week camp, already as weak as anything.”

Fury vs. Makhmudov headlines boxing’s return to Netflix on April 11. Zuffa Boxing signee Connor Benn meets Regis Prograis in the co-main event.