DUSSELDORF: You might expect the new heavyweight champion of the world to splash out on a luxury car or expensive jewellery. Not Tyson Fury. He earned millions of pounds for his night's work against Wladimir -Klitschko but his treat to himself is a vintage second-hand caravan which cost him about pounds 4,000.
The 6ft?9in traveller intends to restore the 1958 Westmorland Star caravan to its former glory and live in it in the garden behind the pounds 500,000 house in Morecambe that he shares with his pregnant wife Paris and their two children.
The 27-year-old unbeaten fighter is nothing if not unorthodox, as Klitschko discovered to his cost. The Ukrainian had no answer to Fury's awkwardness as his nine-year, six-month reign as champion crashed in a scrappy fight in which the old man was made to look every one of his 39 years.
There is no such thing as cer-tainty in boxing, but the young fighter bamboozled and bewildered Klitschko, who simply did not know what to do against the taller man.
Showing disdain, Fury used rangy control, head movement, footwork, speed and huge self--belief to refuse Klitschko a foothold in the fight. From round two onwards, it was written on Klitschko's face and in his body language.
There was no Plan B from the champion; even a Plan A was barely detectable. Fury had told everyone it would be his 'easiest fight' in the build-up. Few believed him. But he was proved completely right.
"The first thing I did when I woke up on Sunday morning was to say out loud 'I'm the new heavyweight champion of the world', and it had a nice ring to it," declared Fury, the eighth British heavyweight in history to win the world crown. Britain's tally of world champions in all weight divisions also rose to 11. "I went online and got the picture off Boxrec.com and it said: 'Won, unani-mous decision, Wladimir Klitschko.' I'd been waiting to see that picture for a long, long time.
"But I don't feel any different this morning than I did the day before that or two weeks ago. I always said that winning the heavyweight championship of the world wouldn't change me, that earning some money or being in the limelight wouldn't change me. It won't.
"Not too many people thought I could do it, but I had faith all along that I'd be the champion of the world and make it an easy fight. And it was an easy fight against one of the great champions with 23 world title defences.
"People said -nobody could breach his defences but a bit of brains is all it took. I'm feeling good, apart from my feet, they're absolutely killing me."
Once the hullabaloo has died down, and comparisons with the likes of Muhammad Ali beating Sonny Liston, Leon Spinks defeating Ali, Buster Douglas dethroning Mike Tyson and Michael Moorer pulling off the unthinkable against Evander Holyfield stop, Fury will look to his next move, having stretched his unbeaten streak to 25 with this unanimous points victory in which the judges are to be applauded for getting the decision right in a handover of four belts.
Klitschko insisted he would execute the rematch clause, but it would not be a major surprise if the ageing champion has a change of heart. "I was lacking speed and he was quick," Klitschko said. "I just could not find the right distance. His reach bothered me. I tried it, but it just did not happen."
Fury has fulfilled, he said, what he set out to complete. "As far as I'm concerned right now, if I never win another fight I don't care, because I've achieved what I set out to achieve in my life. I'm a winner and I had a lot of bumps in the road and could have said 'I'm done, no more, I'm packing it in'. I stuck with it and it shows that determination and dedications pays off," he said.
Those prominent 'bumps in the road' were the two cancelled fights against David Haye, which cost Fury almost a year of career advance-ment, and significant pay packages. A bitter resentment towards Haye lingers over that for pulling out late in 2013 and then in early 2014. "For what he put me through I will never give him an opportunity. Mentally and physically, he tortured me, that kid," said Fury. "There were times that I didn't want to box on any more. He is a pre-tender, a fraud, let him fight the next in line.
"Point blank, if Haye gets into the mandatory position for the WBA title, he can have the WBA. Let him go and fight Fred Flintstone or Joe Bloggs and make no money. If he gets mandatory for it, I will vacate. I'm not giving him a payday."."
There was a change in Fury post-fight. Less bravado, more con-sidered. "But I wouldn't be Tyson Fury if I didn't [play]. People expect me to play the act I've always played and now I'm the heavyweight champion of the world I've got the perfect stage," he said. "Whatever people want to say about me, they can knock me as a person but they can't knock my achievements.
Meanwhile, James DeGale came through a tough first test as the IBF super-middleweight champion with a thrilling unanimous decision victory over Lucian Bute in Quebec and is aiming for a unification contest with WBC champion Badou Jack in Las Vegas in April 2016. In an excellent bout DeGale was fought all the way by Bute at the Centre Videotron in a fast, technical fight between the left-handed southpaw stylists.
Londoner DeGale's superior footwork and speed were enough to convince the judges to score in his favour: 116-112, 117-111, 117-111.