Tyson Fury on getting up from knockdown: ‘I was like a phoenix rising from the ashes’

Tyson Fury went to a draw last night with Deontay Wilder in Los Angeles, and immediately after the fight, there was a ton of discussion. Would there be a rematch? Was the decision bogus? And how the hell did Fury get up in the 12th round when he was knocked down hard by Wilder?

Over at Sky Sports, Fury addressed the big 12th round knockdown:

“That’s what true champions do. I had to make two decisions on that floor: stay down or get up. And as long as there’s life left in this body, I’ll keep continuing to fight. It’s very easy to beat me, nail me to the canvas. But it’s just, like, ‘I get knocked down! But I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down!’ They were good shots that put me down. Credit to him, he caught me flush. But I got up, and I don’t know how! I was like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I got up, got back, and I give him some good punches in the last round meself.”

He also talked more about the decision, where he previously said he wouldn’t cry robbery, but expanded his thoughts into how bad he thinks it was:

“It was a good fight, which I was happy with, but you can’t help the decision. I’m not going to let the decision take how good a fight this was away. Both tried our best, two good men, that’s it. Can’t say it any fairer than that. But to be honest with you, I’ve never seen a worse decision in my life. I don’t know what fight them judges were watching. The guy who give it 115-111 (Wilder), he had me losing the first six rounds, and I don’t know what he was watching. But it’s boxing, it ain’t the first time this has happened. I think it’s as bad a decision as the first Lennox Lewis-Holyfield fight. But who am I to say anything? I’m just a fighter, I’m not the judges. I done what I had to do, Wilder did what he had to do, we can’t take anything away from me or Wilder. We done our best.

“But it’s stuff like this that gives boxing a bad name. Reports like this, all the media today will report bad stuff, controversy, this, that, and the other. Everybody in boxing is saying it’s a very controversial thing. Time and time again we see it. It was an entertaining fight, take nothing away from Wilder, great champion, good boxer, great power, he done what he had to do, and I did what I had to do. I thought I won the fight comfortably, although I had to climb off the canvas twice. But we’ve seen it time and time again, great champions come off the floor to win fights. But we had a draw. Nobody’s lost their 0 and we’ll try to get that rematch in the future.”