New heavyweight champ Tyson Fury calls Wladimir Klitschko camp 'cheats,' says he feared being drugged

The aftermath of Tyson Fury’s stunning upset victory over longtime heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko on Saturday had its fair share of bizarre moments.

First came the colorful Fury serenading his wife with an off-key version of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.” And now the new champion says he refused to drink any water after his victory because he feared that he would be drugged by the Klitschko camp.

As a matter of fact, Fury – who has labeled Team Klitschko “cheats” – says he didn't drink anything until he returned to Britain because he thought that he was going to be set up to fail a drug test.

“I had good information off good resources not to touch anything in the changing rooms because they might try and drug you,” the newly minted WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight champion said after returning home from Duesseldorf, Germany. “I went home dehydrated before I even touched anything. I was so frightened of being drug-tested and failing the drug test.”

Call it paranoia, but Fury truly believes that his opponent would stop at nothing to prevent him from becoming champion. He’s suggested everything from being given a pair of boxing gloves that didn’t fit him to his weight being written down wrong at the weigh-in were attempts to rattle the unbeaten Fury and get into his head before the fight.

“They are cheats, they are extremely good at cheating,” Fury said. “There were all these little things they thought might affect me, as it has with fighters in the past. But not one of them did.”

Klitschko’s camp made accusations of its own in 2004, when the champ suffered a shocking upset to Lamon Brewster. Team Klitschko claimed its fighter’s water bottle was poisoned, leading to the fifth-round TKO. Nothing was ever proven, and Klitschko defeated Brewster in a rematch in 2007.

With Klitschko planning to invoke his rematch clause after losing a unanimous decision, it will be interesting to see how the terms will be laid out for their return meeting now that these accusations from Team Fury have surfaced.