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Is Tyson Fury preparing to cross over into the UFC? Who knows, but here’s video of him working his wrestling with middleweight contender Darren Till.
Two weeks ago, Tyson Fury made waves when he announced his plans to move over into mixed martial arts and train with Conor McGregor. Well, not too many waves since a lot of people just assumed he was talking s**t and there was no way he’d leave his extremely lucrative position at the top of heavyweight boxing to get smashed in the UFC.
That’s still the sober responsible opinion on the subject, but Fury certainly seems up to something or other. On Saturday footage came out showing Tyson sparring with Darren Till, and it even made previous Fury-to-MMA doubter Dana White react with begrudging respect.
@darrentill2 @Tyson_Fury pic.twitter.com/jBHdiJlXMJ
— Dana White (@danawhite) November 9, 2019
Now Fury’s management at MTK Global have put out a 15 minute video of his MMA training and they aren’t being shy about the ramifications. “IS THE GYSPY KING ABOUT TO CRASH THE UFC?” the video’s headline asks.
The video shows Fury working a whole lot more on the important stuff he’d need to survive in the Octagon: sprawling and takedown defense. Till gets him comfortable up against the cage and Fury does a pretty good job for a beginner staying upright, which is really the only skill he’d need to get pretty damn far in MMA.
So once again we have to ask: how likely is it that Fury does this? Logically it’d be crazy for him to cross over. He just signed a new deal with ESPN that is said to be worth $100 million over five fights. There’s a very clear path to making that in the boxing ring. But Fury is … well, let’s not be rude and call him crazy. Let’s say Fury is eccentric enough to say hey, why not make some of these fights UFC fights? And with ESPN and UFC in bed together, they could totally do it and it would be quite the boon for ESPN+ PPV.
Just like with Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather, where there’s a will there’s a way. McGregor willed that fight into existence, and it kind of looks like Fury has the same determination to do something singular and historic too. Only time will tell, but we’re moving our most likely explanation from ‘Fury is messing with the media’ to ‘Fury actually wants to do this, but it’s far from guaranteed.’