Egis Klimas tried to attenuate the harsh words he flung at Tyson Fury in the wake of yet another postponement to the undisputed heavyweight championship.
Klimas, the longtime manager of unified WBO, WBA, IBF, IBO champion Oleksandr Usyk, castigated Fury a few days ago after it was clear that the highly anticipated bout would not be happening on Feb. 17 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as planned, on account of a serious cut over Fury’s right eye.
Usyk and Fury, the WBC champion, were originally supposed to fight on Dec. 23 in Riyadh, but Fury’s previous fight against Francis Ngannou, which saw him eke out a razor close split decision, left him more bruised up than anyone had expected. The new fight date is May 18.
An irate Klimas called Fury a coward and seemingly dragged Fury’s wife, Paris Fury, into his line of fire, by referring to her as a “b!tich.” That prompted an angry Fury to demand an apology from Klimas.
“Tyson Fury is a f—ng coward who will do anything not to face Usyk, and he asked his b!tch to hit him with a frying pan in his brow,” Klimas told RingTV.com. “You can quote me word for word for that. When the news was brought to Oleksandr, he just smiled. That is all he did. He is too mentally strong to break.”
But Klimas insisted that his words were misinterpreted by the outlet—RingTV—that published those remarks, saying he was using that pejorative to describe somebody in Fury’s camp, not his wife.
“So I called on social media, I called Tyson a coward,” Klimas told Boxing News. “What I meant by that, I didn’t mean he’s scared, like he’s scared to fight Usyk. He cannot. He’s a professional fighter. He’s been in the ring so many times. He can’t be scared. But you know most of the heavyweights are scared to go into the ring. I’m not going to name them but there are a few.
“But he’s not scared of Oleksandr Usyk. …He’s scared to lose to Oleksandr Usyk, this is what his fear is. He might not going to feel it, but that’s what it is.”
Added Klimas, “Look, even if I called him names, he calls everyone pieces of sh!t, rats, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who the f— does he think he [is]to not [expect] to be called [names]?”
“It’s not true” Klimas said of insulting Fury’s wife. “It is not truth. I didn’t call his wife [an insult]. I [said] he had so many b!tches in his camp, that maybe one of them hit him with a frying pan. That’s what I had in mind. But I would never ever say something to my biggest enemy … I would never say anything about their wives. …I would never say that. Again, if he thinks like that, let him that [that].”
Klimas said he had calmed down but noted that his anger was justifiable because of Fury’s long history of prevarications.
“Seems to me Tyson is always backing out,” Fury said. “…When you try to put three years (trying to make the fight), you banging on the same wall, same and same. He’s not agreeing, he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want that, OK, let’s do 70-30, Usyk gets 30 [percent], you get 70. Again, something is coming, this is not what we want. Enough is enough. One day Oleksandr said screw all of that. It’s not happening. Then we agreed, we’re going to do Saudi. …we walked away from the room, handshake and the deal was done. I thought it was the easiest deal done that we could put together. Boom, we got the date. December 23rd, great.
“So we go to see him fight. ‘Oh he got [bruised up].’ So the 23rd has to be postponed. So we postpone to February 17. One week before we’re going to go to Saudi, two weeks before the fight, boom—you wake up in the morning. OK, he got a cut. What [else] can come to my mind? Of course all kinds of different wild stuff coming into my mind.”
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.