Tyson Fury’s reign as world heavyweight champion faces fresh scrutiny with new allegations concerning his drug-testing history.
The Mail on Sunday story included allegations from a farmer that claimed he had been offered money to provide an alibi for Fury’s failed test in 2015. The farmer, Martin Carefoot, denied having provided the Fury team with the meat, insisting he was offered £25,000 to make up the story in order to aid their case. Fury’s promoter Frank Warren, who was not involved at the time, told the Sun he had previously been sent letters by Carefoot. He added: “Tyson has never ever met this man and his story is total bullshit.”
Fury’s weekend plans were curtailed by coronavirus but the fighter made no reference to the claims in a post in Instagram. Under a picture in which he and a friend posed in Batman and Robin outfits, Fury wrote: “We was doing a half marathon today but got cancel for ovs reasons, but we gonna do a half marathon at home, Batman & robin.”
Fury and his cousin Hughie tested positive for nandrolone in 2015, which they subsequently blamed on eating uncastrated wild boar meat, citing Carefoot as the person who claimed to have provided them with the product.
After an expensive and elongated stand-off with Ukad, Fury and Hughie received retrospective two-year bans and were able to resume their careers in December 2017.
Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the World Boxing Council whose belt Fury won from Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas last month, said the allegations would have “no impact” on his reign as champion.
“Personally, I prefer to believe Tyson Fury ahead of someone who has already admitted to lying in legal documents for financial gain,” Sulaiman told the Sun. “The person who has claimed he accepted money to lie should be the one on trial, in my personal opinion, especially when he has waited five years to tell his story.
“Secondly, around this time Tyson was not involved with the WBC, he did not fight Klitschko for the WBC belt, it was for other titles, so this issue does not impact on him being our heavyweight world champion.”