John Fury reacts to headbutting ‘little idiot’ on Oleksandr Usyk’s team

John Fury has no regrets about his incident this week.

This Saturday, Fury’s son Tyson Fury faces Oleksandr Usyk in a highly anticipated boxing match that will crown the first undisputed heavyweight champion in almost 25 years. It’s a massive event, and fight week got off to a heated start on Monday when the elder Fury headbutted a member of Usyk’s team during a media event.

A day later, Fury has no regrets about what happened.

“It’s the fight game,” Fury told iFL TV. “Emotions are running high. At the end of the day, I was sat there, minding my own business, and all I could hear was, ‘Usyk! Usyk! Usyk!’ And I’m going to stand up for my son. At the end of the day, he’s my son, he’s the best in the world, and I want people to respect him and give him the credit he deserves as the champion. He’s the best in the world.

“When I was in amongst them, all I could hear was badness. So at the end of the day, some little idiot came forward — I don’t know who he was — in me space, he got what he got, and that’s the end of it. It happens every other week for me, that.”

For better or worse, that does appear to be the case. The Fury patriarch has become infamous for his antics during his sons’ rivalries. In the past few years, Fury challenged Jake Paul to a fight when his son Tommy Fury was feuding with Paul, and he also challenged Mike Tyson when Tyson trained Francis Ngannou for his boxing match against Tyson in 2023. And it sounds like John Fury has no intention of reigning that part of himself in any time soon.

“People are in positions. Tyson and Usyk can say what they want to each other,” Fury said. “They’re the ones that are going to fight. But I don’t think anybody else has got the authority to call anybody else [anything]. Because if one of my team was to insult Usyk, they’d be sacked, because they haven’t got the authority to do that. So at the end of the day, leave the fighting men to fight.

“At the end of the day, I’ve done what I’ve done. I have no complaints about anything. I am what I am. I’m going to defend my name with everything I’ve got. You see me walk amongst every man on me own. I don’t care if it was a rugby field, when it comes to a fight, I don’t care if I get kicked to death. Win, lose, or draw, I’ll have me say. That’s just the way I am.”

Tyson Fury faces Oleksandr Usyk this Saturday at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.