Bags packed, Paris Fury decided more than once she had to leave her heavyweight boxing champ husband Tyson as his depressive moods and drinking became intolerable.
She admits: “I wanted to leave every day. Every day I used to cry and break down and think ‘I can’t deal with this’.
“I literally packed the car and the kids a few times.” Paris, 30, adds she would change her mind at the last minute.
She says: “I’d think ‘how can I leave?’. If you truly love someone you’re not going to leave them to crash and burn.”
Her husband, 31, has spoken candidly about his mental health battles, but Paris, mum to Tyson’s five children, kept her emotions to herself.
It is only now, speaking ahead of tomorrow’s ITV documentary lifting the lid on their family life, that she reveals her own anguish.
Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s ITV documentary lifting the lid on their family life, Paris has revealed her own anguish
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“You feel completely powerless and pushed away. If someone has depression and you’re the loved one trying to help, you’re neglected,” she says.
“Nobody asks how you are, they’re always asking ‘how’s Tyson?’. It’s hard.”
After his surprise victory over Wladimir Klitschko to become world champ in 2015, Tyson had a breakdown.
“He was drinking excessively for days on end and then he’d come home and in the times he wasn’t drinking he’d be in a dark depression,” says Paris.
“At home we kept everything from the children. They never saw the depressive side of Dad. It was always me trying… ‘Daddy’s just gone to work today, Dad will be back later, it’s bedtime now’. Then Dad would crawl in at four in the morning.”
Tyson – a 6ft 9in giant who is from a traveller family and is known as the Gypsy King – and 5ft 7in Paris are parents to Venezuela, 10, Prince, eight, Tyson, three, Valencia, two, and Adonis, one.
Paris, who also has traveller origins, is reported to be worth £100million thanks to the fortune her husband has earned through boxing. But she refuses to abandon her roots.
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Today, she is wearing a designer jacket and Versace scarf, but her jeans are from River Island, “and I bet you my socks are Primark”, she says laughing.
She says she goes to pound shops for “cheap cleaning stuff, toys and cans of pop” and doesn’t understand why fans ask why she is in there. Introduced to Tyson at a wedding when she was 15 and he was 16, she worked at a beauty salon as he forged his boxing career.
She says: “I was earning and he wasn’t.” Even early on Tyson – currently in the US preparing for a rematch with Deontay Wilder on Saturday, February 22 – suffered dark moods. “He’s always been up and down,” says Paris, originally from Doncaster, South Yorks.
“One minute he’d be happy, saying ‘let’s get in the car and go somewhere’, and three hours later he’d say, ‘I don’t want to go, don’t talk’. I used to say ‘what’s wrong with you?’”
Tyson became known for offensive comments, once saying: “I believe a woman’s best place is in the kitchen and on her back.” Paris, a Catholic with traditional values, admits: “I hated that.
“I went mad at him for that comment. He made a joke… in front of the boys.” She adds that when she confronted him he said: “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t think they was going to print it.” She says: “He’s grown up from then.”
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Paris adds that behind his boxing façade, Tyson is a “gentle giant” who was “playing up for the cameras”. She denies he is sexist. “Tyson is the head of the household. But I can do what I want.
“I believe a woman can do whatever a man can. So, yes, you probably would say I’m a bit of a feminist. I’ve been raised a strong woman and I always fight rather than give in.”
She needed all her strength when Tyson plummeted into depression.
“He’d stay in whatever pub or bar he could drink round the clock. I’d say, ‘are you coming home now?’ and he’d always be ‘I’m just not ready yet’ in a drunken stupor. I got so upset.”
Did she feel angry? “All the time, but I’d get over it, and think ‘we’re going to sort it out’.” She says that when she threatened to leave him, he would say: “I’ll change. I’m going to get better.”
