Tommy Fury: Jake Paul will never step foot in a boxing ring again after I knock him out

Tommy Fury is set to fight Jake Paul on Sunday, Feb. 26 in Saudi Arabia, which will be an ESPN+ pay-per-view in the U.S. and a BT Sport pay-per-view in the U.K., a fight that a long time coming and has, of course, been previously scheduled for Dec. 2021 and Aug. 2022, only to not happen.

With just a few weeks from the fight now, Fury sat down with Dev Sahni for a Queensberry Promotions interview about the fight, saying he will knock Paul out “emphatically,” and that Paul will never step foot in a boxing ring again.

On taking Jake Paul seriouslyD

“100 percent, yeah. I’m still four weeks out, but I’m training the hardest I’ve ever trained.”

“Serious business. It’s the biggest of my life, of my career, but it’s not the toughest test. I’m having tougher tests daily in the gym with proper world-class fighters. You’ve got to treat it as it is, but I’ll tell you honestly, man-to-man, I’ve trained for this like I’m preparing to fight for the WBC title of the world. It’s a fight that’s — it’s not like, a learning fight, like, ‘Yeah, I’m taking this fight and it’s a time for me to get better and practice things.’ I don’t like this man, and I will be looking to KO him in emphatic style.

“I’m training as hard as I’ve ever trained before. I’ve mixed up everything relentlessly to get this man out of there. I’m going to prove that he doesn’t belong in this sport.”

On what he thinks when he hears Jake Paul’s name

“Not a thing, because I don’t think anything of him. He’s a nobody in my eyes. I’m in the sport of boxing, he’s not a boxer. Jake Paul means nothing to me. There’s nothing he can say, do, whatever he wants — he can’t get in me head. It’s business for me. It’s a business trip that I’m gonna do in good style, put it that way. He can’t do anything to shake me.”

On whether Jake Paul has been good or bad for his career

“I mean, everybody needs a dance partner, and I believe that’s what he’s done for me. Me and him, we’ve danced now for two-and-a-half years, back-and-forth. It’s a lot of dancing! I’m pretty good at the tango now!

“But we’ve been in America having it out in hallways, we’ve said a lot of things over the past two-and-a-half years, but now it’s time to put it all to bed. I’ve been quietly confident ever since I heard of this man and watched him fight, up until his last fight. There’s nothing this man can do to beat me, definitely not.”

On Jake Paul “crossing a line” by including his partner and family in trash talk

“He can do whatever he wants. I’m not interested. He thinks that putting up some photos and saying some words is gonna get under me skin and rattle me — this is an idiot. He’s a fool. He is one of the people in my inboxes that just text me every day with bad comments. He’s one of them people, he’s got nothing else better to do.

“He’s a troll. He’s whatever he is. I’m in this job, I’m a professional athlete. I am the professional athlete, I’m the professional boxer, I am the professional. He is a joker, that’s how he makes his money, by talking, doing silly shit. That’s how he makes his money. I make my money by doing the professional sport of boxing against other professionals.

“So when he wants to come over here with them jokes and tricks and all that stuff, whatever he’s doing on social media, let him do it. Social media won’t be able to help him (in the ring). It can’t climb into the ring and help him out and give him a like or whatever — he’s in there with me, and I’ve trained hard. I know over these past few weeks and months, I’ve trained 10 times harder than him. I’ve gone to places where no man has ever gone before in training camp.”

On Jake Paul being “different” from past opponents

“I think Daniel Bocianski would have been harder, to be fair, but yeah, it’s ‘different.’”

On whether he’s training to “hurt” Jake Paul

“My mind’s bulletproof. He can’t get into my mind, I’m training as hard as I’ve ever done before. But I’m training a lot different — I’ve brought different people in, I’m training in different places, training in different styles. He’s not gonna know what hit him. I’ve been there. I’ve seen all this before. I was beating better people than he last fought in my amateur days.”

On Jake Paul believing Anderson Silva and Tyron Woodley would beat Fury

“Tyron Woodley walks around like this [hands up], no head movement, two big crater legs, and oh by the way, you throw a right hand [goes down] — so he’s gonna beat me? You’ve got Anderson Silva who took 95 percent of the rounds off, backed him up to the ropes and did nothing — the man’s 50 years old.

“There’s no 50-year-old man on the planet that can beat me. How’s that? It just won’t happen, because he’s 50! I’m 23! He literally had a fight with a 50-year-old man, not too far from my dad’s age, and at the end of the fight looked like he’d been in World War II. How does that — that does not happen if you’re a great boxer. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t. And the 50-year-old man, that was his first-ever boxing fight.”

(Editor’s Note: Incorrect. The bout with Paul was Silva’s fifth sanctioned pro boxing fight, and he does have a win over Former World Champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in 2021.)

“Let him say what he wants, I’m really not interested in what he’s got to say. He’s gonna experience what it’s like to get in the ring with a boxer in a few weeks. And I can’t wait, because I’m in the best shape of my life. There was no springing this fight on me — I’ve been in the gym training hard, very, very, hard, so it’s not looking good for him, let’s put it that way.”

On Tyson and John Fury putting extra pressure on Tommy

“This for me is just another fight — in my opinion, an easier fight than some of my previous fights. I don’t believe for one second that Jake Paul would beat Jordan Grant. I genuinely don’t!”

“If this man didn’t have 20-odd million followers and wasn’t an ‘internet sensation,’ and somebody said, ‘Tommy, you’re fighting Jake Paul Saturday on the Beterbiev-Yarde card, he’s just nobody’ — people wouldn’t even think twice! They’d say, ‘Oh, right, Tommy, you’ll knock him out in a round.’

“But just because he’s Jake Paul, everyone thinks this is a 50/50 fight. A reputation can’t make something a 50/50 fight, you can either fight or you can’t fight. And this guy can’t fight. Yeah, he may look good against MMA guys and old men and wrestlers, but like Floyd Mayweather said, somebody who’s been around the game all his life, as soon as he gets in against somebody who has half an idea what they’re doing, he’s beat! And I will put that into action.

“You can all believe in that. I’m not washed-up. I’m not an MMA man who’s finished my career and come over to boxing for a payday. I’m at the start of my career, and he is not the man to finish my career, I’ll tell you that. There’s a lot of good men out there, but he’s not the man to end me. Definitely not.”

“The truth is Jake Paul will be knocked out emphatically in a few rounds. This man can’t live with me.”

“Enjoy your last training camp. Pay everybody a bit more, you know, ‘thanks for the good times on the way,’ because you’re gonna be kissing the canvas, and you’ll never step foot in a boxing ring ever again.”