KING JOHN KONG

Perhaps if David Attenborough took to making wildlife documentaries about human subjects he should look no further than starting with John Fury, the link between both early and modern man.  

Father to WBC boxing champion, Tyson Fury, and 'Love Island's Tommy Fury, John is the type of man to first shake your hand out of politeness only to follow it up by threatening to chop you up and boil you so that he can add you to his rabbit stew.  

Netflix recently released 'At Home With The Furys' which is rather like England's version of 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' except the ASBO version. Actually, I'm being unfair. The main nucleus of that family is surprisingly grounded considering the vast amounts of money they have; the only potential fly in the ointment is, strangely, not Tyson's occasional hopping aboard the bi-polar express from time to time but the absolute maniac that is 'King John Kong', the furious patriarch famous for gouging a man's eye out and serving four years of an 11-year sentence in prison going on a rampage at a boxing press conference. I sometimes think the Fury family's quick ascension to becoming celebrity royals could all be undone in an afternoon by 'John Kong' simply because he got out the wrong side of his gypsy caravan earlier that morning.

Once unleashed in public, John Fury resembles a cross between Frankenstein's monster and King Kong and no amount of apologies after the fact seem to stop him from repeating his aggressive transgressions in public. The irony is that his son Tommy, who he trains, couldn't be more boring and well-behaved. Between the two of them they demonstrate the Jekyll and Hyde identity crisis between real boxing and YouTube fighting events. If Tommy represents the reputation of 'classical boxing' then John Fury represents the chaos that lurks if it doesn't keep its shit together and loses to the YouTube phenomenon that's currently smashing pay-per-view numbers and filling stadiums across the globe.

Much of this new age has been instigated by the trio of KSI, Logan Paul and his brother Jake. Talk about selling the hell out of a fight, these guys are like Jedi Knights amongst a world of Ewoks (in the boxing world) and the irony is the quality of the fights themselves are irrelevant. It's all about storytelling, not dissimilar to WWE. If they're the young princes then Big John is the giant ogre at the back of the cave threatening to rip off their heads and shit down their necks.  

YouTuber Jake Paul (Tommy's previous opponent) has a giant robot, 'The Problem Bot', towering over him at his press conferences and Tommy Fury just has his dad John. In a pay-per-view event between 'The Problem Bot' and 'King John Kong' I fancy the gypsy psycho to win. Artificial Intelligence may be the biggest threat to humanity in the 21st Century but we still need to get past big John Fury first, the last end of level baddy for humanity before the robots finally take over.

Then I sometimes wonder if John Fury is, perhaps, more like a Poundland version of Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' except he hasn't managed to colonise a tribe for his despotic plans because he's either scared everyone off before he could impose his authoritarian rule or bored them to tears with his idle threats of destruction. Maybe then he's more like the crazy tiger that leaps out at Willard in the same film, a flash of primal danger before it disappears back into the jungle with its tail between its legs.

In many ways, John has now found his natural habitat in the madcap, circus-like world of YouTube boxing where young internet stars such as KSI, Jake and Logan Paul watch on in awe at a man unafraid to instantaneously combust and go spontaneously viral in seconds like a real-life Incredible Hulk without giving any thought to the repercussions for the potential dishonour brought upon the family name. If that's even possible.

Many people say these are the days of the tech kids, but honestly, after watching John Fury hurl a table across the room yesterday at the Misfits press conference in Manchester, I'm not so sure.

There's life in our old dogs yet.

Just no bite behind their bark.