Do we like them?

Do we like Tyson Fury?

Our score: 3 out of 10. Real charity sits beside a run of demeaning comments in 2015 and 2016 that he defended, and the record since then is thin.

The ugly bit is late 2015. Before he was shortlisted for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, he told the Mail on Sunday that homosexuality being legal in countries was one of three things that must happen “before the devil comes home”. He also said “a woman's best place is in the kitchen and on her back”. Nearly 100,000 people signed a petition to drop him from the shortlist, and he answered with “I stick by anything I've said in the past”.

In 2016 he did it again, this time in a video of about an hour. PinkNews reported he said people were brainwashed by “Zionist, Jewish people who own all the banks”, and the Campaign Against Antisemitism complained to the British Boxing Board of Control. Fury later denied being homophobic, according to PinkNews. It reported he never directly apologised, and that he walked out of a 2018 interview when asked about his comments.

That is the harm check, and it's why this isn't an easy pass. It's his own words, aimed at women, gay people and Jewish people, and he defended them. In fairness, I found no new comments like that in recent coverage, and nothing from him on migrants or the climate. In February he said he wants to make boxing great again, “like Donald Trump wants to make America great again”, which is a slogan joke rather than a policy. The gap in the record cuts both ways.

Away from his comments, he had a doping case. UK Anti-Doping charged him over nandrolone metabolites found in samples from his February 2015 fights. In December 2017 he settled and accepted a two-year ban backdated to December 2015. UKAD maintained the violations occurred, while Fury said he never knowingly broke the rules and was glad not to be branded a drug cheat.

The good stuff is real. After beating Wilder in February 2020, he donated his whole reported $9 million purse to homeless and mental health charities, though the report didn't name the charities. That is a serious amount of money to give away, and it counts for plenty.

The recent chapter is a comeback. He announced on Instagram in January that he was back at 37, beat Arslanbek Makhmudov on points in London in April, and now has Joshua lined up in Cardiff for 11 December. Cardiff Council was still finalising some arrangements, including the early-morning broadcast time, as of that September report.