15. Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder and the rocket launcher
What a trip this was. It was my first significant assignment for BT Sport and I was made to feel incredibly welcome by BT. They even advertised me as a new addition to the boxing team on their socials!
The brief was to go to the US, interview Fury and Wilder ahead of their first fight, so they could create an hour-long documentary in the build-up.
Myself and the BT crew started in Los Angeles and I can’t quite recall why but we interviewed Scott Quigg and journalist Steve Kim at the Wild Card on the first day and later on travelled to Big Bear for Fury.
This is where it got interesting. Fury was living in a secluded mansion and when we arrived, he was indifferent at best. You can pinpoint the date of it because it was the day Hughie Fury fought Kubrat Pulev.
We thought we’d be in and out for the interview but Fury told us we had to wait until after Hughie, whom he was at odds with, had boxed. And we had to sit and watch the fight with him.
We did that, and Fury seemed torn. They were recently estranged but there was no doubt Tyson wanted Hughie to win and was disappointed when he did not.
Anyway, an annoyed Fury then stood up and the lighting and audio guys scurried round to set up.
By the time we were ready, Fury was all but checked out. Now I’d known Tyson for many years by this point and when we hit record I was wary about what might happen. As I recall, I had about seven pages of questions at hand and Fury gave me one-word answers and we burnt through them all in just about 10 minutes. He wasn’t having any of it. I could feel the whole crew getting agitated. They were on edge and Fury was giving them no reason to feel differently.
It was at this moment I went off script. I folded my sheets of questions and dropped them to the floor and started talking to Fury face to face and one on one. We riffed. I saw him start to engage and lean forward. He relaxed. He opened up. And more than an hour later we had what I’d class as the best interview Fury has done. (Note: I might be biased and I’ve not seen them all).
The crew was ecstatic and the producer, Kevin Evans, couldn’t believe the turnaround. Fury had apparently loved it. He stood up from his seat and hugged me. “Good interview,” he said. In depth. In depth.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief because I knew we had something good. Then it was on to Alabama.
Wilder was typically on great form. He remembered who I was from some previous meetings we’d had and interviews we’d done, not least back in 2008 after he won Olympic bronze. I was one of the first to interview him about his daughter, who was born with spina bifida.
Anyway, we filmed Wilder initially on the track and then at the gym but the best part came when we went to his home/mansion overlooking a lake. We had a great interview. In fact, before the cameras rolled, we made small talk and he was telling me how he hoped to build a shooting range on the grounds. He then went through his arsenal of weapons and told me he’d recently purchased a rocket launcher.
“No way, I’m not leaving until we see it,” I said.
The interview started and we did about an hour and I was elated with how it went. Wilder had just about matched Fury, the lake we shot on was beautiful and the sun had nearly gone down.
The team and I packed up our stuff and said our goodbyes and as we loaded up the car, out of the house comes Wilder.
“You forgot something,” he said, wielding his rocket launcher in the air.
