Tyson Fury and Joe Rogan dissect the historic heavyweight clash against Deontay Wilder, calling it a battle of raw power vs. technical skill. Fury reveals his 160-pound weight loss and recovery from post-Klitschko depression through discipline—keto diet, training, and faith—rejecting antidepressants due to family addiction risks. He credits Davison’s unconventional but determined approach as key to his comeback, blending European conditioning with American movement to outmaneuver Wilder’s knockout-focused style. Fury’s mission: beat Wilder, then retire, while using his platform to advocate for mental health awareness beyond the ring. [Automatically generated summary]
What do you think of, I mean, for people who don't know, you're fighting Deontay Wilder, who's an American undefeated knockout artist, and you are probably one of the more interesting guys in the heavyweight division, not just because of your personality, but your skill set, the way you move.
You're long and tall, but you've got great footwork and you're fast.
You know, it's a very, very interesting fight as far as, like, boxing technique.
But listen, the guy tries to land that big punch and when you're trying to knock people out with every single punch, then if you miss, it becomes a problem and you go off balance and maybe fall over.
Yeah, look, you can't go swimming and not get wet.
Ortiz had over 300 amateur fights, 20-odd professional fights, nearly knocked them all out.
But If I may be critical of Lewis Ortiz at this minute, he stood in front of Deontay Wilder, right in punching range, which is not a wise decision considering a guy's had 39 KOs.
Not just because of your personality, but because you've come back from mental illness and you're very, very open about it.
I think that's a very unique thing.
I remember when you beat Klitschko and won the title and then you kind of went off the rails.
And I thought you were just partying.
You know, when I heard about it, I thought, well, guy made a shitload of money, became the heavyweight champion, all the pressure in the press and all the craziness.
It started off like I'd suffered with mental health problems my whole life, but I didn't know what it was because I never had no education on the matter.
And it wasn't until after the Klitschko fight, a very massive high, that I had to have an even worse low.
Lowest low that anyone could ever have.
I'd wake up and I think, why did I wake up this morning?
This is coming from a man who had everything.
Money, fame, glory, titles, a wife, a family, kids, everything.
But I felt as if I had nothing.
I felt there was an empty, gaping hole that was just filled with gloom and doom.
And it just was one bad thing happened to me after another.
Within seven days, the IBF stripped me of their title because I couldn't defend against Glasgow.
He was a nobody because I had a rematch clause for Vladimir.
But the IBF wasn't expecting me to beat Vladimir.
So they took that clause in there anyway, thinking Vladimir is going to win a defender against Glasgow.
But because I won, they stripped me of the belt, which was none of my reasons.
The rematch didn't happen initially because I went over on my ankle in training.
I was in Holland training for the rematch.
And I was running up on heavy terrain, and I went over on my ankle, sprained my ankle quite badly, so we had to postpone the fight.
But by the time I was off, like, say, three months, getting this ankle right and all that, I just didn't want to do it anymore, if you know what I mean.
I didn't have the desire.
The fire wasn't burning no longer to fight.
And I was suffering with depression the whole time.
Even in training camp, before I sprained my ankle, I was depressed, as depressed could be, on a daily basis.
And I'm thinking, why am I feeling like this?
I don't have no reason to feel like it.
Some people will say, oh, well, it's attention-seeking or whatever.
But unless you've experienced what I'm saying, it's sort of impossible to understand where I've been or where I've come from.
And it just went from bad to worse.
I hit the drink heavily on a daily basis.
I hit the drugs.
I was out all night partying with women of the night and not coming home.
And, you know, I didn't care about boxing.
I didn't care about living.
I just wanted to die.
And I was going to have a good time doing it while I was doing it.
I used to drink and take drugs to get away from the depression because when I was drunk or high then I wouldn't think about being depressed.
I thought about being a boxing champion or I feel great.
But as we know when the drink wears off it only leaves you with a bad hangover and feeling even more depressed.
For someone who suffers with mental health the worst thing we can do to escape it is take drugs or alcohol.
Well, kudos to you for doing that because so few people have the courage to talk about their struggles when they go through that because it seems like a weakness.
It's very powerful that you're willing to do that and just be open and honest about it.
There's a few people out there that are doing that now.
Our friend Mauro Ranallo, he's gone through some serious mental health issues and he's very open about it and talks about it quite a bit.
Now, when you were training for the first Klitschko fight, For the fight, rather.
Well, in comparison to what you've accomplished, everything else has to seem pretty dull.
I mean, you step into the ring with Vladimir Klitschko, who was widely considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights ever, and you box his face off.
Someone who wasn't just looking for one lucky punch.
I knew going into the Vladimir fight that everybody, all the rest of the opponents, them 25 men before me, had all went in trying to do the same thing, trying to knock him out.
And he's got something of a weird defence where he puts both arms out in front of him.
And it's almost very awkward to land on that chin with big punches.
So I thought, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to make that mistake.
I'm going to outbox him.
And all my team said, this is not a good idea.
We've got to go to Germany to try and outbox a super champion and try and win on the cards.
Are you crazy?
I said, yes.
I said, but if I wasn't crazy, I wouldn't be great.
And I went over there and outboxed him.
And nobody, nobody, apart from my brother or my father, thought I could do it.
You know, even people who were close to me in camp, they were like, they were very unsure of what was going to happen.
And me being me, I always had that little smile on my face because I believed it.
I believed I could always beat Vladimir Klitschko.
I even told Vladimir, years before when I was 22, I said, I'll beat you one day.
Emmanuel Stewart told him too, God rest his soul.
He said, Tyson Fury is the heir to the throne.
He said, when his time is ready, he will beat you.
I... Like I said, I was waking up and I didn't want to be alive.
I was making everybody's life a misery.
Everybody who was close to me was pushing away.
Nobody could talk to me, talk any sense into me at all.
And...
I'd go very, very, very low at times.
Very low.
And I'd start thinking all these crazy thoughts and this, that and the other.
And I was in me car.
I bought a brand new Ferrari convertible in the summer of 2016. And I was in it and I was on the highway.
And there's a strip of the highway where I am.
And at the bottom of about a five mile strip, there's a massive bridge that crosses the motorway.
And I knew that.
And I got the car up to 190 miles an hour.
I was heading towards that bridge.
And I didn't care what no one was thinking.
I didn't care about hurting my family, my career, people, friends, anybody.
I didn't care.
I didn't care about nothing.
I just wanted to die so bad.
I give up on life.
And just as I was heading towards that bridge at 190 in this Ferrari, it had crushed like a Coke can, by the way, if it had hit it.
I heard a voice saying, no, don't do this, Tyson.
Think about your kids.
Think about your family and your little boys and girls growing up with no father.
And everyone saying your dad was a weak man.
He left yous.
He took the easy way out because he couldn't do anything about it.
And before I turned into the bridge, I pulled on the motor and I was shaking.
I could feel myself shaking and I pulled over and I was all nervous and I didn't know what to do and I was frightened and I was so afraid.
And I thought, that day, I'll never, ever, ever try or think about taking my own life ever again.
And I didn't.
I went and got help from the leading psychiatrist doctor in the UK. And my dad went up with me and she said to my dad, she said, can I have a word alone with you, John?
He said, yeah.
My dad told me what she said when he came out.
She said, he is not to be trusted alone.
He's an imminent death risk.
That's the highest level of suicide risk that she'd ever assisted.
And she said, without his faith, he would have been dead a long time ago.
But she said, faith alone ain't gonna hold him, because that's gonna break.
And once that goes, he's done.
So that put my dad's life terror as well because he was checking up on me all the time.
He wanted to be with me 24-7.
He was even sleeping in my house with me.
A married man with four kids.
I was in a right state.
I just...
I just...
I wanted...
I just didn't want to live anymore, and I had everything that a man could want.
There wasn't nothing that I didn't have.
But it meant nothing.
Nothing meant anything.
I felt worthless.
And the longer it went on, the more it hurt inside, and the more I was hurting everybody.
Everybody gave up on me.
My full family thought I was definitely going to die, and I was going to kill myself.
And after that, I was thinking to myself, you know what?
I need to get better.
I need to do something.
But every time I tried to go to the gym, I had another voice saying that.
This ain't Thorals anymore.
I'm not going to do this.
I didn't want to do it.
I'd run 200 yards and pull up.
I wouldn't even get a mile.
I'd think, oh, I can't be bothered.
I don't want to do this.
Boxing is not for me.
I hated boxing at one stage.
In 2016, early 17...
I wouldn't have done a boxing fight for this room full of diamonds.
No way.
I hated boxing.
I wouldn't watch it on the TV. I wouldn't read about it.
I hated boxing.
I'd done it my whole life and I didn't want no part of it anymore.
And I was out drinking.
I didn't care.
I gave up.
Taking drugs, like I said.
And it had come to a point I was doing that for 18 months of my life.
And I was out 2017 Halloween.
I was a £400, dressed up as a skeleton.
And I go to this fancy dress party and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, these are all young kids compared to me.
I'm 30 and I feel like I was the oldest guy in there, like 29. I was like, what am I doing here?
Is this what you want for your life?
And I thought to myself, this is not me.
And no matter how many people told me before this, where I was going wrong, what I was doing, you need to act to your life.
You can only change your life if you want to change it.
And I left and everyone said, are you going home early?
I said, yeah.
I left at nine o'clock.
I went home.
And I got back home.
I didn't say anything to the wife.
I went straight upstairs into a dark room.
And I took the stupid skeleton suit off.
And I was sat there.
And I got on my knees and I was praying and begging God to help me.
And at this point, I'd never begged or cried to God to help me before.
I'd prayed a lot all my life.
But I'd never been in this physical state before.
I could feel tears running down my face.
My chest was wet with tears.
Because I knew I couldn't do it on my own.
It wasn't possible for me.
Because I tried and tried and tried and ended up back in the pub, back drinking.
I almost accepted that that was going to be my fate, an alcoholic.
So I was on my knees in this bedroom and after praying for about 10 minutes, I got up and I felt the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.
And for the first time in years, I knew I was going to make a comeback.
And I called my wife, I said, Paris, Paris, she said what?
She thought I was drunk coming home from the pub.
I said, Monday morning, I start to regain mission to try and get the heavyweight championship of the world back.
She said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because before this, every time I'd have a beer, I'd come back and I'm going to be the heavyweight champion of the world again because it was the alcohol talking.
So I was like the man who called wolf a thousand times on this stupid career that I was living on the past, thinking about years before glory days.
And after this prayer, I got up and said, all right, this is going to be it.
She didn't believe me one second.
But even when I speak to her now, she says, that night you told me that.
She said, I hear a difference in your voice.
Something happened.
Next day, I phoned up Ben Davison.
And I said, I don't want to go back down the old route with the same trainer, same promoter, same anything.
I said, everything's got to change.
I said, it's going to be a new Tyson Fury.
And we called it Return of the Mack Mission.
And as I went out that morning, after phoning Ben and arranging everything, I went out for a run in my sweatsuit.
I had ambitions of running two miles.
I got about five minutes into the run and stopped.
And I walked.
And while I was walking, I thought, I can't run, I'm too fat, 400 pounds.
But I thought, I'm going to walk, I'm going to get out and walk.
While I was walking, I was flicking through on my phone on Instagram.
And I sees this video of Deontay Wilder.
Saying, yep, Tyson Fury's finally done that because the week before I'd been at a boxing show in Manchester or something and the press took a picture of me and it was like everywhere, this big, fat, out of shape, ugly, bald-headed, bearded, white as a sheep man.
I was like, a state.
And he'd done this video, yep, after seeing this evidence of Tyson Fury, I finally know he's finished.
He can never come back and even if I would have fought him in his A day, I'd have knocked him out.
And before that, he was talking about Mike Tyson, how he'd knock Mike Tyson out and around.
And I thought to myself, that's very disrespectful to talk about someone who's not even from your era and wanting to fight them and all that sort of stuff when there's no possible chance.
So I thought to myself, you know what, if I ever do fight you, I'm going to give it to you for that reason.
And then when I saw this other video of him saying things about me and that I couldn't come back and that, he'd give me that much more motivation to return just so I can beat Deontay Wilder.
So I had all these court cases on as well.
I was being charged with taking performance-enhancing drugs, nandrolone, something I'd never done.
I had nandrolone in my system.
It's produced naturally in the body.
But they say my levels were elevated.
The UK AD, UK anti-doping said there was no case to answer.
But all of a sudden I had a big WADA case on me.
That took nearly three years to sort out.
And everyone said, you're getting your hat nailed on here, son.
All the time I was fat and out of shape and not training, I was still being random drug tested by UKAD. Really?
That's why I tested positive twice for cocaine.
And everyone said, no, you're never getting back.
The Boxing Water Control suspended my license in the UK for the cocaine use.
So I had a court case looking at ban forever, basically.
Spension.
The doctor made me medically unfit to fight.
So that was after I forgot about that bit.
When I was rescheduling the Klitschko to fight, this psychiatrist phoned up and says, look, he is medically unfit.
He can't fight anybody.
He don't want to live.
Never mind fight.
So I was medically deemed unfit to box, suspended by the Boxing Board of Control for the cocaine use, and I had an antralone case on me, and a refusal case.
And by the way, it was racking up millions of dollars in lawyer's fees too.
But I was so confident that everything was going to be okay because when I was down on my knees, I just knew that it was going to be okay.
And everyone was like, what's the point in training and doing anything with you when you can't do anything?
You're not in a position to do it.
I said, everything's going to be all right.
Don't worry.
Court case comes along in December.
We go.
They say, right, this court case is dragged on.
Insufficient evidence.
Get rid of it.
We both agreed that we was going to call quits on the case.
I go my way, they go theirs.
They pay their legal fees, I pay my legal fees.
Done.
That was a drugs case out the window.
Finished.
The suspension...
I had a meeting with the Board of Control in the UK and they said, look, if you can get passed medically fit by a doctor, mentally, then we'll reassess your case, until then denied.
So I said, right, no problem.
Phoned up the psychiatrist, the same people who I'd spoke to, all these doctors, three or four different, Dr Phil's, Dr Jones, whoever else, said, right, I need reassessing.
Reassessed me.
Bang!
Passed.
Flying colours.
I went back to the Board of Control, handed in my certificate by all these different doctors, examinations, physical and mental.
They said, we have no other choice but to give you a licence reinstated.
Bang!
So it was three of the biggest obstacles in my life at once were all done within a month or two, straight away.
Then I just had the easy task of losing 160 pounds.
Which if I could have got over all them other things, losing weight as a fighter was something that I'd done natural anyway.
So then me and Ben set about losing this 160 pounds.
And on the way back, I spoke to Frank Warren, he became my promoter.
And Frank said, right, you've had a long time out the ring, you've abused your body.
Let's get you four or five comeback fights just so you're ready.
I said, okay, no problem.
Had the one comeback fight, had the other comeback fight.
I said to Frank, I don't need any more comeback fights.
And I don't blame them because this is the business at the end of the day.
And if I was his management team, I'd say, stay away from Fury, stay away from Wilder, and we'll just fight the rest of the people and keep making plenty of money.
Why do we need to fight these guys who are very risky?
For maybe a little bit more than we're getting now, two times more.
But in the long run, we can have five fights and not get beat by mediocre people who would know he's going to beat and get the same money or more.
So it doesn't make sense.
So this is why me and Wild have agreed to fight.
Because at one time or another, it's got to be more than about money.
We're fighters.
We're everywhere champions of the world.
Of course we've made money in our careers.
I've had 28 professional fights, 27 professional fights.
I've made money.
It's about more than money now, surely.
If I spend the money I've already earned, waste it, then I'm stupid.
Then 200 million would be no good to me because I'd spend it anyway.
I've got to give Deontay Wilder a lot of credit and respect for that and admiration because it seems to be that he was the only man at the time, before I was even come back, who was willing to risk everything he's got to prove he's the best.
And isn't that what fighting's about?
Where men want to prove they're the best of all the others?
The thing about Klitschko is, even though he was very, very successful, and his style was amazing in terms of his success rate, god damn those fights were boring to watch.
It was, to boxing people who know boxing, they know how hard what I was doing is to do as a heavyweight and the skill and all that.
But, like you say, to the average Joe, who knows nothing about boxing, who wants to see two big men punch the shit out of each other, it was a boring fight.
So that's why Joshua gets more credit for his win over Klitschko, even though he got put down and nearly knocked out than I did, Klitschko didn't land the glove on me because their fight was 50-50 and they were knocking lumps off each other, but my fight was like 80-20 in my favour where I didn't get touched.
Cunningham, believe it or not, and this is going to sound strange, Cunningham was the hardest fight I ever did have in my whole career, amateur or professional.
The reason being, he was very slippery.
The way I explained Cunningham, he was like a conger eel, all full of oil in front of me.
I couldn't pin him down!
He was light on his feet, he was weighing 208 pounds or something.
He was a three-time cruiserweight champion of the world and he stepped up into heavyweights.
He was a slick...
Talented boxer, and I tried to walk him down, use my size and power, but he was just out boxing me.
What I'm good at, boxing, moving, slipping and sliding, I couldn't do against Steve Cunningham because he was quicker than me.
He was like he was a better boxer all round than me.
I couldn't do nothing with him.
And he'd knock me over even though he was a light puncher, supposedly, and walk right onto it, come from the back of the hole, dig over and right, right in the chin.
So I got up and I just went straight forward at him and I thought, no more boxing now.
I'm going to hit him round the body, put him up through the middle, round the corners.
You might be head on point, but sooner or later I'm going to get you.
And I did.
In round seven, I felt him going weak because I was just pushing him back, pushing him back and he's hitting me gloves and hitting me face and hitting me everywhere, basically.
But I walked right through everything with my guard up.
And after he got tired, I hit him with a heavy body shot in round seven.
And he didn't recover and I pushed his head back and knocked him clean out with the right hand.
That was the only time he was ever knocked out in his career.
So when you decided that you were going to make this comeback and you're dealing with all these mental health struggles, what did you do to overcome the mental health problems?
I'd set myself a 10 pound target and I'd reach that and then I set myself another 10 pound, 15 pound, whatever.
And I'd give myself little rewards and stuff.
I wasn't obviously eating junk food.
I was on a strict diet for six months.
And I was training twice a day, six, seven days a week.
But with the mental health, I don't suffer with mental health when I'm active, when I've got a goal.
And I think most people will vouch for this.
If you suffer with mental health problems, you tend to suffer them when you're on your own, when you've got a lot of time to think, and when you're not doing much.
But when you're busy on a daily basis, you don't have enough time to think about mental health.
And I figured out if I exhaust myself in the gym, I come on when I'm too tired to think about anything.
But it's fascinating that you're saying that setting goals and setting your mind on things and hard training is what set you back on track.
You know, I don't know what you're like when there's no one in front of you, but standing here in front of you right now, I would say this is a healthy, vibrant guy.
But that's fascinating that most people think that to come back from a mental health issue like yours, you need psychiatric care and you need medication.
And you're saying you did it with setting goals and hard work.
Well, if you believe in something, just like you were talking about believing in pills that don't do anything, belief is a powerful thing.
Who knows what's behind that belief, but what you're saying is so powerful that you, just by virtue of changing the way you think about things, setting goals, working hard, you lifted yourself out of the worst depression of your life to the point where you were suicidal.
So, from accomplishing your ultimate goal, beating Klitschko, becoming the heavyweight champion, and then falling into this deep funk, do you think you had to go through all this to come back again?
I believe I was being tested to see what type of man I was and what type of character I had.
And, you know, even before the Depression, I didn't appreciate things.
Nothing.
Nothing was value to me.
Even something I'd worked hard for.
If I'd worked hard and saved up for a car, just say, for five minutes, it'd be okay, but then I wouldn't want it anymore.
It was a piece of shit.
So nothing mattered to me.
I didn't value anything.
Anything that I had, and I worked hard for, and everyone knows, like, what I have is blood money, because I pay for it with my face, and my body gets punched to pieces for what I have.
So you'd think I'd appreciate things more than an X-Man, but I didn't appreciate nothing.
I didn't appreciate anything.
Anything I had or achieved, even World Championships, anything, I thought, is that it?
It's just so unusual that someone has that solution.
That hard work, dedication, and setting goals is what lifted you out of the depression and made you appreciate life and made you appreciate all the aspects of it.
So from now on you just have to continually set goals in your life set goals whatever them goals might be they don't have to be massive goals But they can be anything really anything that I want to do or I want to achieve or I want to go someplace or whatever Then I work towards and set myself a goal.
It's almost like a little treat or whatever It's fascinating because no one's ever really connected that.
I mean, people have made that connection in terms of like when they study happy people, one of the things they find about happy people is they're goal-oriented people.
They set goals to accomplish those people.
But nobody's ever really set that as a remedy for depression and for mental health issues.
Setting goals, achieving those goals, that's the key to keep it going.
After doing quite a lot of research on myself and experiencing it, and it works for me and I find it works for a lot of people I speak to who've got the same problems.
I get messages from all over the world from different types of sports people and different types of people asking for information and help and how I got through mine and what I did and I'm happy to help.
So if there's anybody out there who's struggling in silence, which a lot of people are, then I'm always here to help if I can.
Before I was doing a lot of Long running and long boxing works like 12-15 rounds on the bag, pad work, all that sort of stuff.
While I was trying to lose the weight, I was doing more short, explosive stuff.
Like I was doing short, faster runs, as fast as I could go basically.
I would do more interval training and stuff like that.
Mainly it was focusing on diet though.
Diet's the most important thing for anybody trying to lose weight.
You could train like a Trojan warrior but not eat correctly and you go three steps forward and two and a half back and you find yourself after six months a little bit less than you was.
But you stay in the same position because With the diet, not that I'm a dietician, but I know how it works with losing weight, heavy.
Because all the way through my career, I've put on a lot of weight.
I lost just over 100 pounds for the Klitschko fight the first time round.
And I lost over 120-something pounds before that again.
So what I do to lose weight is I go on a no-carbs diet.
So, it'll be totally keto.
Ketosis diet.
I put my body into keto shock.
And they say you should stay.
If you're doing a keto diet, you should only do it for 11 days.
It was the case that he was willing to put himself on the line to prove to me that he could do something.
That takes minerals.
And if you don't have any confidence, then you can't go over to somebody who's really good looking and say, oh, my name's Ben, and my mate wants your number.
Is that possible?
He wouldn't have got the number.
If he didn't have any confidence and he didn't have any gumption to him, he wouldn't have got that number.
So I knew he was a good choice because he was young and fresh and had a point to prove.
No, he wouldn't be the trainer if it was just that.
Before this, he was taking me on the pads and stuff in between Billy Joe sessions.
And we gelled straight away.
Me and Ben think alike.
Sometimes you meet people in your life and you're very similar in personalities and we like the same things.
We like to do the same things.
We've got the same type of personality.
We just gelled.
Automatically, I gelled.
Even before I said this about the number of the girls, I already knew that I was going to make Ben my trainer.
He's got a very keen eye for boxing.
And what he does is very...
He doesn't look like he knows a lot about boxing.
By looking, he just looks like a young lad.
Good-looking fella.
But when you sit down and analyse the fighters, he studies boxing day and night.
We'll be out watching movies after the training.
Ben's in his room watching Deontay Wilder, watching the fights, watching this, watching that.
He studies the game.
And he's always coming up with different game plans on how to beat this person, how to beat that person.
Very, very happy.
He's a very knowledgeable young lad.
And I said before I even made him my coach, I said, within five years, you're going to be one of the leading boxing trainers in the world.
And now he's got his chance.
And if I beat Deontay Wilder, Ben Davison will win Ring Magazine Trainer of the Year 2018. Now, how much different is your training with him than with your last trainer?
It's different.
Peter was a top trainer.
He got me to be World Heavyweight Champion.
But like I said, we never had no more motivation in the gym.
It was stale.
There was no vibe in the gym.
It was just like, work again.
I didn't want to be there.
I started training camp a few times and walked out of the gym every time because I didn't want to be in the gym.
I didn't have no motivation to be there.
So the main thing is boxing is boxing ain't rocket science.
You can only do a few things.
I think the most important things in boxing is road work, pad work and sparring.
Everything else, not interested.
My favourite thing to do is spar.
And I think what better to do than practice what you do with another person fighting other men.
And that's my favourite thing.
And I've often sparred hundreds of rounds for fights to get fit and lose weight.
James Toney used to do that too.
He used to spar hundreds and hundreds of rounds to get himself fit.
And that's what I've done as well.
That's my favourite thing.
But now we do a lot of strength and conditioning work.
We do a lot of weights and stuff.
I figured out over here, being around American fighters and stuff, especially the boxers, they don't have that program of weights and stuff.
It's more like maybe light weights, loads of repetitions and stuff.
I'm being a heavyweight.
I lift heavyweight, very heavyweights.
I'm deadlifting very heavyweights.
I'm benching heavyweights.
I'm using my body weight and a lot of stuff.
So I believe it's a very, very key factor in being a big, strong man.
You have another guy who does strength and conditioning.
One of the things about a boxing trainer is knowing when to pull you back, knowing when you're peaking, and that mostly comes from long-term success, working with many, many fighters.
That's got to be one of the biggest chances you take with a young guy.
It is, but I put him to the test many, many times.
And he does.
He can see it.
Sometimes being a successful trainer, doing successful things and making champions, and then you go work with that trainer, you think, you don't know nothing.
That's mad.
I've worked with a few trainers on Falkland.
I'm not going to go into any names because that'd be disrespectful.
But Ben knows when I'm feeling good.
My style is all about feel-good factor.
And if I feel good, I'll fight excellent.
And if I'm not feeling under the weather, then I'll fight rubbish.
You know, often I've went to the gym not wanting to be in the gym and felt like shit but then had the best training session of my life.
That's happened many, many times.
Until you actually work it out and get into the groove, I don't think you can really know what you're going to feel like until you start training because if you went on how you felt before the gym sometimes, then you won't be in the gym at all.
I've been overtrained before and I've been totally unfit, fat as anything.
And I'd rather be unfit ten times a day than overtrain once.
Can't do nothing when you're overtrained, but at least when you're unfit, you lose your breath, but you recover when you have a rest and you get back at it again.
But overtrained, you're just one pace, you can't do nothing.
When I first started working with him, he'd worked with boxers before, a lot of local boxers and British boxers, but he'd never worked with a heavyweight before, and he didn't know what he was doing.
Because everyone makes the same mistake, the runner humans will train a heavyweight like we'll train a lightweight.
They're not boxing trainers, they're traffic and conditioning trainers.
So he was trying to make, in the beginning, he was trying to make me do something that a 10 stone, a 145 pound guy was doing.
It's not possible, it's a different world.
But only through experience did he realise what we need to do and what we don't need to do.
And now he's like, it's perfect.
I wouldn't change him for the world.
And I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have him because I'd have to go and go through all that same learning process again.
And it's not just heavyweights, it's heavyweight boxing.
Because I had this guy, this Mr Olympia guy, and he used to train some massive guys, 350 pounds, solid muscle.
But he didn't know anything about boxing.
And boxing is a performance sport.
And no matter if you look like an Adonis, but you can't do five rounds, it's pointless.
I'd rather look fat and be able to do 12 rounds on me head to look like an Adonis and be fucked after five.
Well, what's unusual about you is that you're a tall guy who moves like a guy who's not tall.
Yeah, and that most tall guys have that advantage of long length and utilization of that length They're very good at judging distance and they have that advantage But what you're doing is you're moving around a lot on top of being tall which you could see with Klitschko It was very off-putting like right away.
All my life growing up, I used to watch all the great American heavyweight champions of the world.
Women being European, there's a stigma about European fighters.
They're stiff.
They can't move.
They're just strong.
I agree.
I agree.
90% of European fighters are stiff robots who just do a lot of conditioning work and lift a lot of heavy weights and they go in there trying to do one thing.
One, two, left up, right hand.
Take four or five shots back.
I didn't want to do that.
I wanted to have European conditioning with American style.
The best of both worlds.
And I believe that's what I've got.
I've got the brashness and the movement and the speed of an American fighter but I've got the European conditioning and core strength.
Now when you think about a guy like Deontay Wilder who's got this wild style and tries to knock you out with every punch, are you doing anything different without giving away your strategy coming into this fight?
Are you doing anything different in terms of your preparation or in terms of the way you shadowbox or move or train?
It's a good trick, but we all know what happens when that trick don't land.
You've lost.
You need more than one punch to beat me.
You need to be able to set it up with footwork, speed, feints, movement, and he doesn't have any of that.
If the great Klitschko who had excellent footwork and ability to set that big punch up couldn't do it, what chance has the big swinger got of doing it?
If I get hit by a swinging right hand as a serve knocking out, it's my fault.
I want it to knock me out.
If I let Wilder swing one of those wild punches from the back of the hall and hit me and knock me out, then I'll say thank you very much.
You put me out of my misery.
God bless you, Wilder.
Because obviously...
I can't be a great fighter that I think I am if I'm getting knocked out by swinging punches.
It's just not possible.
I don't take big shots anymore.
Years ago, before pre-2013, I used to take everything, bang in the face, try and walk through and use my sheer strength, size and aggression and heart and determination to get through everything.
But as I stepped up in levels, I realised that wasn't going to get me anywhere but a good hiding, a good punching in the face.
So I changed my style to boxing and moving, slipping and sliding.
People have never seen me take any big shots because I'll just ride them.
A bit like Muhammad Ali used to do.
He used to take the shots on the gloves, go with it, slip, slide, roll.
Even as powerful as George Foreman was, he was a heavy favourite going in, knocked out Frazier and Frazier beat Ali and he had great fights over 15 rounds.
It didn't help him in that fight because he used his greatest asset against him.
And if I can use Deontay Wilde's own power against him, then I've won.
He's looking for one punch, I'm not.
So there we go.
And I don't believe if he can't land that punch, he's lost every round.
Even his promoter, Lou DiBella, said recently, he said, if he doesn't knock Tyson down and knock him out, I don't see how he can win.