This story originally appeared in the Fightful Boxing Newsletter, which releases each Thursday morning.
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The tumultuous career of Tyson Fury, one of boxing’s most eccentric and controversial characters, has ended when Fury recently announced his retirement once more.
Sources close to the situation have said that Fury is fine and does not believe he will continue his retirement. What’s different about this time is that there is a good possibility that there is a realistic chance that he would never even get cleared to fight ever again.
The former unified heavyweight champion had been under a lot of scrutiny in the past year since defeating Wladimir Klitschko back in late 2015. Their rematch had been called off numerous times as Fury was deemed "medically unfit" to compete.
Fury was submitted to a random urine test September 22 in Lancaster, England. The results came back positive for the substance benzoylecgonine, the central compound found in cocaine and the marker for a positive test for the banned substance. Fury also tweeted a meme of his face replacing Scarface character Tony Montana sitting in front of a large amount of cocaine as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the positive test, but it did little to help his cause in being reinstated. According to reports, Fury's doctor believes that he may be suffering from mental health issues
When the cancelation of the second rematch attempt with Klitschko was announced, it was also announced that Fury would undergo treatment. Klitschko and Fury were originally going to fight on July 9, 2016, but Fury suffered an ankle injury weeks before the fight and could not compete.
Fury also had his license suspended by the British Boxing Board of Control and gained a significant amount of weight and was not in ring-shape. In addition, even if Fury wanted to box he faces a U.K. Anti-Doping hearing for a previous charge of using a performance-enhancing drug, the banned steroid Nandrolone, stemming from before he defeated Klitschko in 2015.
Fury had been calling out current unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua for several months now, claiming he was training to fight on the undercard of an early July card headlined by Billy Joe Saunders. For completely separate reasons, neither man fought on that card. Fury had been hoping to have his comeback be capped off with a fight against Joshua in 2018 with the unified titles on the line.
Throughout his career, Fury has been loud, brash, vulgar and one of the most colorful characters in British boxing in years. Despite his personal demons getting the best of him at times, if reports are to be believed, Fury’s talents in the ring are undeniably great. Fury won the English heavyweight title, his first title won as a professional boxer, in 2010 in just his eighth pro fight.
Fury burst onto the scene as a true world title contender when he defeated Dereck Chisora in 2014 to become the unified European, WBO International and British heavyweight champion. Almost exactly one year after beating Chisora, Fury not only went the distance against Klitschko, but also won the fight, dethroning the former heavyweight king. But that would be the last we see Fury compete in a boxing ring.
Like the first retirement attempt, it is still not sure whether or not he will follow up on the retirement.
