Tyson Fury on Licking Deontay Wilder's Blood During Fight: 'I Was a Lion'

Tyson Fury licked blood on Deontay Wilder's neck during their heavyweight title boxing match on Feb. 22, 2020, which the former won with a seventh-round TKO.

On Wednesday, ESPN's Brett Okamoto asked Fury why he decided to do that, and the champion provided the following response, first noting that he did it "like a vampire":

"In the prefight interviews, I said I wanted to taste Deontay Wilder's blood this time. So I had an opportunity to do it there in Round 6. So I had to taste his blood just so I could get the feeling of what my prey tasted like. I was a hunter, I was like a lion, and he was a gazelle, a large gazelle, and I took it down and then that was it, game over."

Okamoto then asked if there's a different mindset in the ring, noting that's something Fury probably wouldn't do outside of a boxing match.

"Different mindset," he said. "The animal instinct come out inside the boxing ring. And it's either him or you. But it's weird because I've not noticed anyone licking anybody else's blood before. Hope he doesn't have any germs or anything, or I've got his cooties now, baby."

Fury isn't the first boxer to do something completely out of the realm of normalcy to another person in the boxing ring, with Mike Tyson notably biting chunks of Evander Holyfield's ear in June 1997.

Still, it was a strange (and unnecessary) moment during a match that Fury largely dominated before finishing Wilder.

The 32-year-old Fury is now 30-0-1, with the lone draw coming in his first match with Wilder in Dec. 2018. BoxRec ranks him as the second-best pound-for-pound men's boxer in the world behind Canelo Alvarez.