‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ was one of the more curious playground rhymes from my childhood.
Used as a bit of a rallying cry against name-calling and verbal bullying, the old adage immediately sprung into my mind when I heard news of the reason why Tommy Fury had pulled out of the Misfits 20 card at the back end of 2024.
Fury was headlining against Darren Till at the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester on January 18 – until he wasn’t. Now boxers pulling out of fights is not a new phenomenon and is as old as the sport itself. It’s a hard, brutal old game, and injuries are common. However, the reason Fury gave for pulling the plug was quite unique.
Fury and former UFC star Till were set to meet in a Misfits crossover clash, but it was Love Island star Fury who decided to withdraw after a fiery press conference saw Till threaten to kick and take down the British cruiserweight in the ring.
Till - an MMA fighter of some repute - said in the presser: "At the end of the day, I can't beat you, I'll just kick you in the face in there. How about that? I'm a proper fighter, not a boxer.
"I walk in, no one here is a threat to me. Not one person in this room, security, you, your dad are not a threat to me. I'm an MMA fighter, so if I want to kick you or elbow you in the face, I will, and no one can do anything about it."
Such moves of course would have been highly illegal, and Fury cited the verbal threats as the principal reason to pull out of the contest.
It begs the question though, was pulling out too extreme?
It’s interesting that the Fury family – led by perennially charged up patriarch ‘Gypsy’ John Fury – have made intimidation and disorder at press conferences into a bit of an art form in recent years.
When not head-butting Perspex with no top on, or throwing tables around, Big John Fury is often the most outspoken of his fighting family. Indeed, we have become so used to Big John looning it up at press conferences, that the public have almost become desensitised to it. So it feels kind of odd that one of his sons would pull out of a fight with someone due to a diatribe at a press conference. He wasn’t injured. He just wasn’t happy with what Till was threatening.
As an alternative to jumping off the bill, Fury could instead have protected himself by inserting a clause in the contract that would see the MMA fighter hand over his full purse as a forfeit should he stray from the rules of boxing.
Dana White revealed that a similar clause was used in Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr's fight back in 2017, when Team Mayweather was concerned that Conor might revert to kicking or worse if things were not going his way.
"There is a huge penalty clause in the contract," UFC president White said to Yahoo Sports at the time. "The athletic commission would keep the entire purse and decide what to do."
Fury is the only man to beat Jake Paul, but his career has not really kicked on since that split-decision win against ‘The Problem’ in Diriyah in February 2023.
While Paul took part in the most-streamed sporting event ever against Mike Tyson in November 2024, Fury hasn't fought since October 2023 when scoring a narrow points victory over YouTuber-turned-boxer KSI.
Paul is living proof that in life, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
In terms of personality, Tommy Fury is the antithesis of Jake Paul. And while we should never assume that loud is strong and quiet is weak - we can say with absolute certainty that Fury needs a big 2025 – because inactivity is the biggest sin in boxing.
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