Tyson Fury has made a bizarre claim that his brother, unbeaten heavyweight Tommy, is a bigger draw than Canelo Alvarez.
Tommy Fury extended his record to 5-0 on Saturday by knocking out a heavyweight with an 0-9 record, while pound-for-pound king Canelo defended his super-middleweight world titles with a KO of Avni Yildirim in the USA.
The younger Fury was fighting at prime time in the UK on BT Sport, while Canelo was on DAZN. But his older brother - heavyweight champ Tyson Fury - produced some outlandish figures to claim his bro smashed Canelo in the TV ratings.
"Tommy slaughtered the competition over the weekend! Including America's biggest boxing star Canelo Alvarez. Wow," tweeted a gleeful Tyson Fury.
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His joy was understandable, as Mexican superstar Alvarez is the highest-paid boxer on the planet with paydays north of $20 million per fight.
However the figures he quoted - which showed Tommy Fury's mismatch peaking at 1.9 million viewers, while Canelo managed only 105,000 in the UK - were clearly bogus.
In fact, the source was Del G, a Twitter user who'd previously said: "For my next trick I'm going to wait until there's been boxing on various platforms/channels over a given weekend and publish completely made-up numbers as viewing figures so that people with nothing better to do can passionately argue about it."
Looks like Del G got his wish, although boxing fans were divided on whether Tyson - a master of humorous publicity - was in fact in on the joke when he shared the clearly fictional ratings.
Nonetheless, 'The Gypsy King' - tipped to fight Anthony Joshua in a heavyweight mega-fight later this year - has also turned matchmaker for his 21-year-old brother.
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Tyson finished his tweet with a callout to Jake Paul, asking: "@jakepaul where you at?"
The YouTuber is in training for his boxing match against former UFC fighter Ben Askren. But Tyson clearly wants him to take on the challenge of Tommy - who found a big fanbase after his appearance on reality TV series Love Island.
Tommy Fury would, in actual reality, be too big for the 24-year-old Jake - who, whatever he might be, definitely isn't a heavyweight.
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But Tommy is clearly becoming a star in his own right if he can draw in close to 2 million TV viewers for an unheralded, two-round blowout against a total unknown.
At least, those are the numbers the 6ft 9in Tyson is claiming - and we are not about to argue with him to his face.
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Tyson Fury, Boxing, Tommy Fury, Canelo Alvarez
