Tommy Fury has clarified why he was absent from the press conference, which was held in Saudi Arabia to introduce his upcoming fight with Jake Paul.
Paul and Fury are scheduled to fight each other on February 26th, 2023, after failed attempts to arrange the bout in December 2021 and August 2022.
Taking into consideration their hostile past, a lot of fans are still hesitant if the bout will really occur, and that uncertainty was only increased when Paul declared that Fury would not be present at their press conference.
Paul mentioned that there were ‘private matters’ that caused Fury to miss the presser, but Fury has since reported that he did not wish to undertake the long voyage to the Middle East while he was at the concluding phase of his training.
In his comments to MMA Fighting, Fury said:
“I can clear that up in two seconds. Basically, Jake Paul signed up into the world of professional boxing and I am a professional athlete, a professional boxer. I always have been.
“And [ask] any professional boxer and they’ll tell you this — no one breaks camp, mid to the end [of training camp] to fly all the way to Saudi Arabia, have a 10-minute press conference, fly all the way back to Manchester, complete my camp then fly all the way back to Saudi Arabia again the following week.
Now why the press conference couldn’t wait until a week later on fight week is beyond me. Most big fights, they schedule press conferences on fight week. I don’t know what is going on there.”