Liar, liar, gloves on fire!

During Fury's appearance on Sky's A League of Their Own they came up with a game based on his unusual training ritual of setting his hands on fire. Unless you were born yesterday, you already know that's unbelievable. That's probably why some find it appealing. In this post-modern world that's relentlessly attacked by online forces, there are lots of obviously untrue things that we pay no mind to, like when Katt Williams goes around playing two truths and a lie.

This story is reads more like a lie that just got out of hand. The earliest version of it was during the build-up to Wilder-Fury II. The snowball began in a 2020 interview with Gareth A. Davies, former polo correspondent for British tabloid The Telegraph, on a YouTube live video.

In the video Fury says he'll be dipping his hands in petrol for 5 minutes a day, though Davies titled the video 'I'll be dipping my hands in petrol 5 times a day for a month'. The "legendary" Big Joe Joyce has been in a few television programs and films over the decades, though not so many that you could call him a celebrity without stretching the definition of the word. In the 2011 documentary 'Knuckle' he tells a familiar story.

In a follow-up interview with The Athletic (pre-NYT), Fury reiterates that “I take notice of these guys. These guys are legends in the game, and legends do what legends do, so I thought I’d try it. I’ve been putting me hands in petrol in the gym, after sessions, for five minutes. I don’t know if it’s done any good but I feel OK, Me hands are injury free, and so far, so good.” So good (if a little silly) so far. Even Deontay Wilder localised 'petrol' to 'gasoline' as he played along with this version of events. But where did the fire come in?

In the earlier interview Davies makes a quip about Fury setting his hands on fire on fight night which isn't quite the same as doing it for training. The source of this is actually Javan SugarHill, who has been downing his uncle's Kronk legacy faster than Tyson Fury downs junk food in between training camps. In a February 2020 interview with some clickbait YouTube channel, Hill upped the ante.

Personally, I think he was just being slightly queer as he sometimes is. But he went on to repeat the fireless version elsewhere with more oddities.

Sugarhill teases how he trains Fury: "Then I kick him in the chin. Then he lays on the ground and I just jump on him. That's how we toughen up Tyson's chin! They say he dips his hands in gasoline to toughen them up." Is that true, Sky Sports joke? "That's true. We also train blind-folded… I am the only man to beat Tyson! I kick his ass all the time! The day I lose to Fury is the day I lose control!" - 22 October 2021

After that it just stopped being mentioned for a while. Until this explosive quote in GQ promoting the upcoming Usyk-Fury 'Ring of Fire' bout.

This one ended up getting repeated in enough mainstream outlets and online circles (in Britain at least) that friends of mine asked me about it at the time. I suspect that this being one of the most recent pieces of news about Fury is the only reason that it was mentioned on A League Of Their Own, though once again slightly altered. The way Fury told it was:

"Me trainer had put bandages on and then put, like, lighter fluid on my bandages and set 'em on fire. And I was just like punching 'em out and getting faster and if you don't put 'em out with speed, your hands get burned. And guess what? My hands were ****ing burnt alive!"

This time the story is changed to change the focus from toughening up the skin/knuckles to punching faster instead. It's also the first and only mention of bandages. But the live demonstration casts further doubt on Fury's claims as he's easily beaten by lady footballer Jill Scott.

Hilarious. And what do pesky scientists think of dipping your hands in petrol? Those fun-hating nerds don't approve and recommend you immediately use water and soap to clean any part of your skin that's exposed to it. Gasoline is mildly carcinogenic but the greater concern is that it's bad for your skin, you can get irritant chemical/degreasing contact dermatitis which leads to blisters, peeled skin, and cracked skin after repeated or prolonged exposure. Does this actually make you punch harder? Since it doesn't affect your knuckles, not really. All you'd really be doing is giving the protective layers of your hands chemical burns and drying them out. The only potential benefits to a fighter would be 1) your hands eventually being in constant low levels of pain, distracting or numbing you from the pain of landing punches, and/or 2) unknown psychological benefits. I've seen it suggested that by stripping the moisture from your hands you could more readily cut your opponent with a blow in a bareknuckle fight, but this is no benefit to a gloved fighter.

Lighting your hands on fire would result in burns. The kind of burns that leave scars. The kind of scars that Tyson Fury's hands don't have. Like a lot of fighters though, he does go to plastic surgeons to repair lacerations. It can't be completely ruled out that, at one point, Javan SugarHill set Tyson Fury's wrapped hands on fire and any potential damage was healed with time and medical science at an unknown point between 2020 and 2024. But due to the absence of any video evidence, Fury's pathological dishonesty, Hill's ambiguous storytelling, and no corroborating sources (reliable or otherwise) I'm going to file this as fiction. MMA fighter Tom Aspinall repeated the same nonsensical story of dipping his knuckles in petrol for training in 2024 but revealed on his YouTube channel post-fight that "we're taking the piss really, it was all a big ****ing joke. We've got to drop the gag because people think it's serious."