http://www.manchestereveningnews.co....ike_tyson.html
HE'S 6ft 6in, weighs 18 stone, punches like a steam hammer and moves like a middleweight ... and he is just 17 years old!
Throw in the fact that the lad's name is Tyson Fury, he has male model looks and a gentle, shy manner, and you start to understand why normally inscrutable Wythenshawe trainer Steve Egan believes he has a future world heavyweight star on his hands.
Of course, the attributes and size mean nothing if there is no fight in the lad. But Fury was born a fighter - he was seven weeks premature and `died' three times in the incubator.
When his dad, former professional fighter "Gipsy" Johnny Fury, told the doctor he was to be named Tyson "after the greatest heavyweight who ever lived", the doctor could not suppress his smile. "He told my dad that it would not be a good name for me, because I would only be small," said Fury with a gigantic grin.
Fury takes his first steps down the road to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing on Saturday, when he faces Anthony Simpson in the final of the ABA novices super-heavyweight novice championships.
"I don't normally like to shout about my fighters, but this lad is something special," said Steve who, together with brother Sean, runs Egan's Boxing Academy. "He is huge and hits hard, but he moves beautifully. With the heavyweight scene the way it is, he could hit the top and stay there for 20 years.
"He is confident without being arrogant, although he has had a T-shirt printed that reads `Tyson Fury - super-heavyweight gold medalist, Beijing'!"
Fury, who lives in Styal, has turned down offers from rugby and basketball teams, and a modelling agency, to concentrate on his boxing.
Ambitious
The 2008 Olympics might sound ambitious for a teenager with just eight fights behind him, especially with Liverpudlian David Price, the 22-year-old national champion and Commonwealth Games gold medalist and veteran of 52 fights, standing between him and a place in the Great Britain team.
But Fury said: "I feel as if I have had a hundred fights, because it just comes naturally to me.
"I know that to get to Beijing I need to start doing big things in the next two years. Even if I beat Price in the ABAs next year, they would probably still send him because they have worked with him for years and he is their golden boy. So I will have to take him out twice, which means beating him and then giving him the chance to beat me in return."
The future is already being mapped out. Next month, he will travel to Germany with a Manchester team for a 10-nation tournament, and he has lined up a clash with former ABA finalist Tom Dallas for October.
"He is 6ft 7ins and Tyson will eat him," said Egan. "We have problems matching Tyson, as his name is getting known. When he'd had five fights and won them all, he represented North West Counties against the North East, and we were told the 19-year-old he was fighting had the same 5-0 record.
"Tyson went in there, broke his nose and knocked him out in half-a-minute, even though the kid weighed 18st 10lbs.
"It was only afterwards that we found out the kid had had 20 fights, had been a national boys' club champion and had boxed for England."
Fury walked into Egan's Academy three years ago, and his size means it has been difficult to match him.
So progress has had to be slow, although Tyson finds sparring in the shape of his 15-year-old brother Shane, who is 6ft 3ins and weighs 19st 12lbs!
Tomorrow's final in Knottingley, for fighters with fewer than 10 bouts to their name, is a good starting point for Fury's Olympic dream. Fury and Simpson should have met in the semi-finals in Nottingham last weekend, but the two boxers in the other semi were both disqualified in a bad-tempered bout, leaving just the Wythenshawe lad and his opponent in the competition.
