Fury stripped of IBF title

Tyson Fury’s eventful reign as world heavyweight champion continued on Tuesday with a hate crime accusation and, in a separate issue, the removal of one of his titles.

A petition calling for Mr Fury to be removed from the 12-person shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year has now received 80,000 signatures.

“We take every allegation of hate crime extremely seriously and we will be attending the victim’s address to take a statement”, the BBC quoted a GMP spokeswoman as saying.

The sanctioning body wanted Fury to fight its mandatory challenger, Vyacheslav Glazkov of Ukraine, but he will instead have a rematch with Klitschko, also from Ukraine.

“It’s true he’s been stripped of his IBF belt”, said IBF chairman Lindsey Tucker.

Fury, who stunned Wladimir Klitschko to win the WBA, IBF and WBO belts earlier this month, has been accused of expressing homophobic views. The repercussion was that he lost the IBF belt.

Boxing: Dethroned boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko has demanded a rematch with Tyson Fury which likely to take place at Wembley.

Amaechi told BBC Breakfast Fury should remain on the shortlist as the heavyweight was “quite right” about his boxing victory.

Fury compared homosexuality to paedophilia in a Mail on Sunday interview, and said that they signalled the arrival of the devil. “I didn’t say I had a problem with homosexuals or abortionists or paedophiles, I didn’t say I’m with it or against it, I just stated what I am taught through my scriptures”. In my view the real heavyweight champion now is WBC champ Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs).

He just thinks the BBC is wrong to be condoning the nomination of someone like Fury who people, especially children, are supposed to look up to.

“There are lots of things in this life that are sins and whoever hasn’t sinned can throw the first stone at me”. My belief is he shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Sports Personality of the Year because of what he said. Fury has also said he was “not bothered” about being a role model to kids.

However, the new world champion has been known to make very controversial statements about women and gay people, inspiring LGBT campaigner Scott Cuthbertson to begin the petition for Fury to be removed from the SPOTY shortlist.

The BBC was forced to apologise after presenter Clive Myrie said Fury “cannot be a d******* and win Sports Personality of the Year” during the late-night newspaper review on the BBC News Channel on Monday.