The faith of Tyson Fury

As soon as he had beaten Deontay Wilder last weekend, Tyson Fury gave thanks “to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ”. He said that he was going to pray for his fallen opponent. He has said that when he was recovering from depression and mental illness he “couldn’t do it on [his] own” and got down on his knees to ask God for help:

I went down as a four hundred pound fat guy but when I got up off the floor after praying for like twenty minutes…I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off me shoulders.

Most media reports glossed over these (admittedly eccentric) expressions of Christian piety, but the clips of Fury praising Jesus for his victory went viral for good reason. Fury’s life story – his achievements, his mental health struggles and his apparent triumph over them – cannot be understood without some recognition of his faith. The secular world lacks the vocabulary to make sense of how religious belief might inform an athlete’s life and influence his performance.