HIS £200million superfight with Anthony Joshua could be on the verge of collapse but Tyson Fury faces a much bigger battle – the wrath of his missus.
Just days after the undefeated, 6ft 9in Gypsy King was pictured being slathered in suntan oil by bikini-clad glamazons, pregnant Paris dropped everything to join him in Miami.
The move prompted those close to the mother-of-five to speculate about whether she is “marking her turf”.
A source said: “Paris has stood by Tyson during the most turbulent time possible, but that doesn’t mean she’ll put up with anything.
“She’s strong-willed, with a mind of her own.
“It looks like Tyson was just enjoying some light-hearted flirting. But if he crosses the line, he’ll know about it.”
And in an apparent warning shot, Paris, 31, ditched her wedding ring in snaps posted to Instagram hours after the pictures of her husband’s poolside revelry emerged.
It led Tyson, 32, to acknowledge he was in her “bad books” — and she was soon booked on a first-class flight with her full Fury brood to join him in Florida.
Friends insist the couple are now “better than ever” after being reunited in the States.
As if to prove it, Tyson has bombarded social media with loved-up photos and videos of their time in the US.
One video, posted on Wednesday, shows them dancing in their swimwear, as the boxer protectively cradles Paris’s baby bump.
Later that night, fans were treated to footage of the couple smooching in a restaurant.
One boxing source remarked: “He’d be better off concentrating on his training. It’s a distraction.”
But while the shots of Tyson being oiled up by American beauties might have stung his wife, the couple have overcome far bigger obstacles during their 12-year marriage.
DRUNKEN BLUR
Both of Irish traveller descent, they met when Paris was 15, and he a year older, at a mutual friend’s wedding.
After a chance meeting the next year, they began dating then married in a gypsy wedding at Doncaster’s St Peter-in-Chains Catholic Church in 2009.
But the religious pair did not sleep together until their wedding night.
Paris said: “Even after we got engaged, Tyson would sleep in a caravan in the yard of my parents’ home while I slept in the house.”
Tyson’s career took off early in their marriage.
In 2015, he pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the sport’s history by beating Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko to win the IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight world titles, then declaring it a “dream come true”.
But the £4million prize and fame could not mask his torment behind the scenes.
Tyson fell into a deep depression after bottling up feelings over Paris’s 2014 miscarriage and the death of his uncle Hughie, aged 50, after a blood clot following a routine op led to a cardiac arrest.
A rematch with Klitschko was cancelled as Tyson failed a drugs test, gave up his titles — now held, as well as the IBO belt, by British rival Joshua — and had his fight licence suspended.
He heard voices in his head, saw demons, ballooned to 28st on a diet of takeaways and sweets, and unravelled into a drunken blur.
By 2016, his boozing and cocaine binges threatened to tear apart his marriage.
Paris admitted it was a “terrible time” watching him “putting his body and himself and his brain through all the torment he was going through in his own head”.
She revealed: “I wanted to leave, every day. I packed the car and the kids a few times. But I’m like, ‘How can I leave?’ If you truly love someone, you’re not going to leave them to crash and burn.”
Tyson made a series of ill-advised public outbursts, attacking gay people and Jews, and joking about “slapping bitches”.
In June 2016, he tested positive for a prescribed steroid and admitted he was taking “lots” of cocaine.
He confessed all in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, saying: “The only thing that helps me is when I get drunk out of me mind.
“I’ve done lots of cocaine. Lots of it. Why shouldn’t I take cocaine? It’s my life, isn’t it? What the f*** has that got to do with anything?
“I’m as fat as a pig. I don’t even want to wake up. I hope I die every day.”
His lowest point that year came when he tried to take his own life after he “lost the will to live”.
‘LITTLE BIT OF INFIDELITY’
Climbing into the Ferrari supercar bought with his winnings against Klitschko, he planned to plough it into a motorway bridge.
He recalled: “I got the car up to 190mph. I didn’t care what anybody was thinking. I didn’t care about hurting my family, friends, anybody.
“As I was heading towards that bridge I heard a voice say, ‘Don’t do this. Think about your family, your boys and girls growing up with no father, everybody saying their dad was a weak man who left you and took the easy way out’.”
A switch seemingly flicked and Tyson astonished everyone again by getting clean.
Over the next 12 months, he ditched the cocaine, sobered up, lost ten stone and trained hard to get back to peak fitness.
Tyson admits that there was “a little bit” of infidelity during those hazy cocaine years, but refused to reveal more.
While he is now devoted to his family, he admits women hit on him “all the time”.
He said: “Everywhere I go, and not just because they know who I am.
“I could go to foreign countries where people don’t know me and they’re still hitting on me.
“Because I’m tall, dark and handsome. Good dress sense. In shape. They’re like, ‘Who is this guy? Is he Brad Pitt? George Clooney?’.”
But he insists Paris need not worry, because after all the “bulls*** I’ve put her through, I’m not going anywhere”.
The couple, who live in a modest £550,000 home in Morecambe, Lancs, have also differed over raising their children — daughters Venezuela, ten, Valencia, three, and sons Prince John James, eight, Prince Tyson II, four, and Prince Adonis Amaziah, one.
In 2020’s Channel 5 documentary, Tyson Fury: The Gypsy King, the pair argued about whether they should let their kids go to secondary school.
Paris said: “I was brought up a traveller and want my kids to be brought up as travellers.
“They’ll probably leave school at 11 and be educated at home.
“The boys will take a wife and make their family, the girls will take a husband and make their family.”
But Tyson described parents who do not allow their children to go to school as “dream killers”.
He said: “Whatever all the kids want to do, I’ll just be happy they are following their dreams.”
Asked if he would like his sons to follow in his footsteps as boxers, he added: “I would like my children to better that.
“I would love them to be the first Fury to graduate at university.”
In February last year, he won the WBC world title from American Deontay Wilder and in August this year, Tyson is scheduled to fight Joshua, 31, for his old titles plus the IBO belt.
There was concern in March this year when he revealed he was drinking up to a dozen beers a day and had quit training because he was fed up with fights collapsing.
He said: “I’ve stopped training at the moment — I’m on holiday. I am drinking between eight, ten, 12 pints of lager a day.”
Now his £200million clash with Joshua is on ice after a US judge ruled that Tyson first owes Wilder a rematch.
On Instagram, Tyson said Wilder had “asked for $20million [£14million] to move over” and he added: “Looks like I’ll have to crack his skull again.”
He went on to trash-talk the Olympian — who he now looks set to fight in Las Vegas this summer.
Fury’s co-promoter Bob Arum said the Joshua fight will be moved to November or December while they “get rid of” the American.
It’s not the first time Tyson’s life has cut up a little complicated. But once more, the Gypsy King is coming out swinging.
