John Fury has revealed that he was close to pulling out his son, Tyson Fury, from a fight with the then-unified world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.
Tyson was the mandatory challenger for Klitschko when the two fighters met in Dusseldorf in 2015, with the former producing an upset on the judges' scorecards and kickstarting his career as one of the world's best heavyweights.
However, as has been well documented, Tyson's struggles with his personal mental health were beginning to become prevalent around this time and an incident in training almost resulted in his father pulling the current WBC world heavyweight champion out of the meeting with Klitschko.
"He beat Klitschko at the worst point in his life because only a few weeks later he had that breakdown," Fury told DAZN's Off the Cuff.
"He went into that Klitschko fight mentally unwell; I was going to pull the fight weeks before.
"I went to the gym ready for a sparring session and he’s laid on the floor crying.
"When he walked into the changing room, straightened himself up he said ‘I worked all my life as a boxer to get to this point, I’m the number one challenger, mandatory challenger, I’ll never get this slot again. I’ll fight and I’ll still beat him. No matter how I feel, on the night I won’t feel like this because that ring is my home and I’m comfortable in there.’
"So, we took that and ran with it, and the rest is history."