Maloney feels Tyson’s fury

11 August 2009 – By Mark Doyle

Rising heavyweight star Tyson Fury has launched a scathing attack on promoter Frank Maloney.

Fury has won all seven of his professional bouts to date via knockout and will next month challenge John McDermott for the English title.

However, Maloney, McDermotts promoter, has dismissed Fury, 21, as nothing more than a rent-a-quote motor-mouth.

In Furys eyes, that quote is more than a little ironic.

Coming from Maloney I think calling me a rent-a-quote motor-mouth is a bit rich, said Fury. Thats essentially what he was for Lennox Lewis!

In my opinion, Maloneys role with Lennox was little more than a court jester. He was basically a mouth in a Union Jack suit running around embarrassing himself like some kind of over excited novelty mascot.

Lennox Lewis was a great fighter and was destined for greatness regardless of who was involved with him. In my opinion, it was a case of him being in the right place at the right time, my pet dog could have done what Maloney did for Lewis – and hes blind and only has three legs.

Hes not getting any better either. He made a big fuss at the start of the year about signing three big heavyweights and hes already got two of them beaten. He said Scott Belshaw was going to be the next George Foreman and the richest athlete on the planet. He must have meant the richest athlete on whatever planet Maloneys living on because I blew Belshaw away inside two rounds.

He signed another big guy from Sheffield called Dave Howe to a three-year contract and he got knocked out in less than a minute by Dave Ingleby, a guy whos not even allowed to spar with me.

And Fury believes that Maloney, contrary to what he is saying in public, is well aware of just how talented a fighter he is.

I think Maloneys finally realised that he needs a decent heavyweight on one of his shows. Hes probably fed up with seeing his own heavyweight prospects fall over and his shows lately have been headlined by mostly dull fights between little flyweights and bantamweights, he argued.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and I think even Maloney realises its time he put on a decent main event again.

It might only be for the English title but its interesting that the British Bantamweight title fight between Gary Davies and Ian Napa has been relegated to the undercard so I think that shows what kind of impact Ive had considering I only turned pro last December.

I can guarantee you that Maloney will end up with egg all over his face again when I smash McDermott and hell be paying me for the privilege of having me box on his show.

My own promoter, Mick Hennessy has kept me very busy since turning pro and this is a chance for me to impress a whole new audience.

And Hennessy is also of the opinion that Maloney has made a grave error of judgment in affording Fury a chance to shine on one of his bills.

Maloney comes up trumps for us every few years and Id like to thank him for helping me to build Tysons career even if he doesnt know it and its only for one fight. I just hope theres no excuses from Maloney and McDermott and they turn up, he said.

We pushed for Tyson to be made the mandatory for the English title because we wanted the fight. We lost the bid but were happy to honour the result of the bids because we want to see Tyson progress.

Its a great sign Maloney winning with a big purse bid. The last time he did that was for the Carl Froch Brian Magee fight a few years back and he was talking rubbish about that one as well.