SCOUR the annals of heavyweight boxing since Mike Tyson departed the sport and you’ll be hard pressed to find a fight with a backstory as compelling as the one accompanying the championship contest between former lineal champion Tyson Fury and current WBC champion Deontay Wilder, scheduled for 12 rounds at the Staple Centre in downtown Los Angeles tonight.

Fury, as anyone who’s maintained even a casual interest in the sport in recent years knows, is not a fighter given to moderation. Neither in nor out of the ring has the 6’9” 30-year-old switch-hitting giant ever gone about his business with the quiet robot-like professionalism of a man whose every word is scripted and configured at the behest of managers, advisers and a PR machine with a beady eye on marketability. 

Instead, where the self-styled Gypsy King is concerned, the crash, bang, wallop approach has never been better served, even though it has cost him dearly in the past.

The reluctance of the public to warm to him in the aftermath of his outstanding performance and victory over Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf in 2015 — ripping the IBF, WBA and WBO belts off a man who’d gone 11 years undefeated — was the price he paid prior to his descent into depression for daring to be open in airing his views on a given topic regardless of how controversial or unpalatable those views might sit within mainstream society. 

And in the first half of his career, in the lead-up up to Klitschko especially, some of those views were certainly impossible to defend. But to what extent were they the product of a developing consciousness and mind on the part of a young man from a much-maligned Travelling community, who since coming to prominence has always seemed to exist in a state of alternating tension between profound sensitivity and cultural values by which maleness and fighting walk hand in hand, with little if any space for reflection? 

Fury’s descent into a personal abyss of depression, alcohol, drug and food abuse after that memorable night in Dusseldorf is well known. Since coming back, however, his willingness to speak openly about the darkness that enveloped him and how he now views himself as an ambassador for others battling similar demons, suggests that the experience has humanised and matured him. 

The announcement that he intends donating his purse from the Wilder fight to building housing for the homeless, and the way he’s been taking the opportunity to speak out about the travails of people on the street while based in LA, bear testament to a growing consciousness within a fighter who has found new purpose in trading leather inside the squared circle.

One hesitates, of course, before rolling out any premature comparisons with another heavyweight who fought for a prize greater than self — Muhammad Ali — but the veracity of Fury’s sincerity is not hurt by an incident that came to light in the immediate lead-up to his clash against Wilder. 

Those who have spent any amount of time in Hollywood, long associated with the glitz and glamour of fame and celebrity, would be able to vouch for the human carnage and immiseration that in reality defines the place. Indeed the magnitude of human suffering and degradation is such that it’s impossible to ignore unless you make a conscious decision to do so.

Fury’s trainer, Ben Davison, revealed that while relaxing in a Hollywood coffee shop between sessions at Roach’s Wildcard in the last week of training camp, a homeless man in a state of distress appeared outside at the window. He was barefoot, bedraggled and when he attempted to enter the place customers protested to the staff, who in the conventional manner proceeded to shoo the man away.

According to Davison, Fury got up, left the coffee shop and caught up with the man as he was crossing the street. Upon reaching him he removed his shoes and handed them over, even though it meant going without shoes himself until able to get another pair. 

It’s hard to imagine many fighters in his position, with just days to go before a lucrative heavyweight title clash, being impacted by the suffering of a homeless man, a stranger, to the point of giving up his shoes in such a spontaneous gesture of kindness.

Then we have the press day Fury attended a day or so later, when he was asked by a reporter how he’s found the experience of training in LA. Fury replied not with the usual stock answer but instead of how the sheer number of homeless people he’s noticed in and around Hollywood has come as a shock, going on to make the point that he’s never seen anything like it and that “it’s a crisis that needs to be dealt with,” going on to say that “it’s like being in a third world country.”

Imagine the surprise of the sports journalists present. Imagine their surprise at a top heavyweight contender, just days before one of the most anticipated title fights in years, bursting the bubble of denial that must need be inhabited in order to be able go about your business amid such crippling poverty and social carnage and not be shaken by it.

What it does do is affirm that Tyson Fury 2.0 is a fighter who could well be in line to make the kind of waves guaranteed to make a lot of people uncomfortable for the right reasons.

However before he does he has the no small matter of Wilder to contend with. And Wilder, be assured, is no ordinary boxing Joe; not with 39 knockouts in 40 fights on his record, he’s not.

Light for a heavyweight, with the kind of lanky top-heavy physique that conjures parallels with Tommy Hearns, the power the WBC king generates defies biomechanics. Whether Tyson Fury can defy a fighter who goes by the ring name The Bronze Bomber is another story. 

If he does it will go down as a comeback to rank with Ali’s in the early 1970s. If he does not he will hopefully take comfort in the fact that even before stepping into the ring he already defeated the hardest opponent he could ever possibly face: his own demons.