The father and trainer of British boxing champion Tyson Fury has been jailed for 11 years after gouging out a man’s eye in a brawl.
John Fury left Oathie Sykes, 44, half-blind after a 12-year grudge erupted in bloody violence at a car auction.
Moments before shoving his finger into Mr Sykes’right eye, 46-year-old Fury declared himself the country’s toughest man, Manchester crown court heard.
John Fury personally steered his 22-year-old son Tyson – who supported him from the court's public gallery – to the British heavyweight title after just a handful of fights.
The former bare-knuckle fighter boxed professionally in the eighties as Gypsy John Fury and is a well-respected figure in the Irish traveller community.
Choking back tears, Fury - of Moss Lane, Wilmslow - begged the judge for mercy after admitting wounding Mr Sykes with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
“I’m worried about my son,” he said. “His boxing career is on the line.”
Speaking of the victim, he added: “If I could give my own eye to him to get back to my children I would do – I’m begging you for my life.”
Mr Sykes told court that he believed Fury wanted to completely blind him in the attack on the morning of July 14 last year.
“It was like he was trying to pull his finger into my brains through my socket,” he said. “I was screaming, 'Please stop, you’re hurting me.'
“After that he tried to take my other eye – he tried to blind me, sir, not once he tried to blind me, twice.”
Mr Sykes told the court he had gone to British Car Auctions at Belle Vue to buy his 17-year-old son Buddy his first van when John Fury approached him with his ‘chest up’.
The two men had been pals but had a violent bust-up over a bottle of beer during trip to Cyprus in 1999.
When they met at auction Mr Sykes claimed Fury asked him: “What about me and you finishing that fight?”
The victim claimed that he said ‘I don’t want no trouble’ and Mr Fury replied: “I’m the best man here in the auction, I’m the best man in the country.”
Mr Sykes added: “He meant that he could beat any man at the auction, he’s the best man at fighting.”
The pair traded punches, lurching between cars, before Fury grabbed Mr Sykes by his shoulder-length hair and gripped him in a headlock.
“He was pushing his hand in my face,” said Mr Sykes. “It was his finger, it went in my eye, in the corner and he wouldn’t stop, he was like gouging and poking and twisting and poking, all of a sudden I heard this sound, a clicking like, a popping noise and when he took his hand away I realised blood was in his hand, a lot of blood.”
The attack, which Mr Sykes said he ‘thought would never end’ was witnessed by scores of car-buyers.
Mr Sykes’ teenage sons Buddy, and 13-year-old Jesse, saw the ‘awful aftermath’ after going to the cafe to get a drink.
Fury was arrested a month later and admitted the offence, saying he was ‘a man of honour’ who was willing to accept responsibility.
But he denied that he had meant to deliberately blind the victim in what had merely been a ‘hard contest’.
He claimed that the victim had bitten him on the cheek, and had been accidentally injured when he pulled his face away.
This meant the two men had to give evidence in court before Judge Michael Henshell.
Fury said the brawl had started out as a fair ‘fight between travelling people’ before Mr Sykes family waded in, leaving him ‘frightened for my life’.
“If I was going to do what he said I done to him it would have been a lot worse than that,” he said. “I’m a not a feather-duster man.”
Fury said that Mr Sykes had targeted him 'to make a name for himself' knowing that he was ’out of shape’.
But Mr Sykes denied it had been a ‘straightener’ – an organised fight between two grudging parties – and told the judge ‘what John Fury did was wrong’.
His son Buddy, himself an amateur boxer, said his father suffered a ‘savage beating’, and his 13-year-old brother, Jesse, also gave evidence in his dad’s favour.
Judge Henshell ruled against Fury’s account of how the victim was injury as ‘entirely unconvincing’.
Defending the father-of-six, Michael Levy said while fighting was a ‘way of life’ in Fury’s community, he was not a violent man, but someone dedicated to his family and the career of his 'extremely accomplished' son, who plans a world title challenege.
Sentencing, Judge Henshell said Fury had been ‘cold-blooded’ in inflicting the ‘catastrophic injury’.
A spokesman for the CPS said: "This was a sustained and unprovoked assault that led to a man losing an eye.
“The fact the root of this dispute which originated more than 12 years ago was so trivial only serves to highlight the senseless nature of the attack."
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Boxing champion Tyson Fury's father jailed for 11 years for gouging man's eye out
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