Transformed Tyson Fury ready to take first step on road back to heavyweight glory against Sefer Seferi

When Tyson Fury last threw a punch in a prizefighting ring it is possible that he was the best heavyweight in the world, without challenger and untouchable if he stayed fit.

It was November 2015 and Fury, who was only 26, had just bamboozled Wladimir Klitschko over 12 rounds to win the horde of four championship belts Klitschko had acquired during 11 years of total dominance. Big Wlad was on a run of 19 title fights, with 14 ending early and he only looked bad that night because he kept hitting thin air. All the belts were pilfered from Fury’s possession without a punch.

Fury was regal in Düsseldorf in the football Stadium under a roof of increasingly desperate echoes from Klitschko’s equally bewildered fans. “I might be stuck in Düsseldorf forever,” he warned last week. He had made the same grim prophecy a few weeks after the fight at a time when his entire life was being dragged to the edge.

This Saturday Fury returns to the ring in Manchester, a transformed man in a changed sport and with a mix of both hopeful and dreaded expectations dangling ominously above his head; it has been a difficult exile for the troubled self-proclaimed Gypsy King. However, he is not looking for sympathy.

There is not a convenient plaster to cover the errors, the mishaps, the mess Fury has created and left behind since that night of pure glory against Klitschko. His detractors, a seemingly organised squad of unforgiving perfectionists, have highlighted his flaws in repetitive testament; Fury has been guilty of stupidity, has opened his arms, bowed his head and admitted his mistakes.

Fury is still only 29, just 18 months older than current world champion Anthony Joshua, and that is an age when the big men start to find their feet; Klitschko was 41 when, 18 months after losing to Fury, he came to London and had his brutal fight with Joshua. It looked like a miracle, a boxing resurrection to test the faithful, when Klitschko was able to convince all of us at ringside he was not yet finished that night at Wembley Stadium against Joshua. The answer to the illusion is simple: Klitschko could hit and have a fight with Joshua, but was given a boxing lesson from the history books by Fury, who on the night was his lightest for three years. We all too easily forget the genius of that win and a beautifully stage-managed week in Germany when the Fury team rattled the Klitschko machine repeatedly.

I asked Fury last week when he knew that he could beat Klitschko and straight away he answered: “I knew in the week before, I was in his head, I was breaking him down – I refused to be threatened by him. He was beat before the first bell.” As a close witness to the gentle tyranny Fury and his people put Klitschko under, I have to agree.

In addition to not looking away like so many doomed challengers had done when in the same room with Big Wlad, Fury also sat back and watched as his people demanded less foam in the ring. On fight night the annoyance continued when Fury’s people made Klitschko remove his bandages and apply them again, which is one of boxing’s most toxic requests. Fury had a witness to the procedure, which is standard in title fights, and when he asked for the fists to be wrapped again there was very nearly a scuffle. On the night Lennox Lewis shook his head in amusement when I told him about the bandages. “That is never great, it can get in a fighter’s head,” said Lewis. He was right.

Fury’s father, Gypsy John, unsettled the Klitschko team when he was one of the people who found the extra foam under the canvas in the ring and demanded its removal. However, the removal of two-inches of foam saved Fury’s legs, but should have also benefitted Klitschko, who trains with heavy foam padding under his ring canvas in the gym. It is the equivalent of training on sand and then switching to a hard, quick track for the race. Klitschko was, according to Fury’s testimony, a broken man before he got the chance to fight and dance on the fast canvas.

This Saturday in Manchester it is unlikely Fury, with a totally changed team, will need to pay quite so much attention to Sefer Seferi, the man picked to be victim one of the return. Fury has dropped the 100 pounds in flesh he promised, has said all the right things about the “bums” holding his titles, made his bold predictions about getting his glitzy belts back. He has floated with class through a long fixture list of press and media commitments with a smile, with a joke and also, under the ready wit, a real awareness of his future. He knows ending an exile has its own difficulties, hidden dangers and he is aware of history and the lessons it can teach us.

In 1970 Muhammad Ali returned after 43-months in forced exile and he put himself under terrible pressure: He fought two world-class heavyweights in Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena in a crazed six-week spell. Ali stopped them both, Bonavena in the 15th and final round, but suffered; Ali was tired, his body ached. However, just four months after returning he fought 15 rounds with unbeaten Joe Frazier in the Fight of the Century. “Ali lost that fight,” Fury said. “Perhaps it was too soon after coming back – perhaps he needed more time,” Fury told me. He is right and I don’t expect him to make any mistakes or take any risks anytime soon. He knows he is not that man in the Düsseldorf ring just yet and he will start to find out on Saturday if and when that glorious fighter will return.