World heavyweight challenger Tyson Fury claimed at his pre-fight press conference this afternoon that he has been overcome by nerves after arriving in Dusseldorf for his showdown with Wladimir Klitschko.
Englishman Fury, 12 years Klitschko's junior, is aiming to take the WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO belts from the Ukrainian, who has dominated the heavyweight division and not lost for 11 years, on Saturday night.
Speaking to reporters in Germany today, Fury said: "It all crashes down to me as soon as I land into the town and I see the big posters everywhere and I actually feel like I'm involved in a fight now and I'm really nervous.
"I never felt this way before - ever. I feel really anxious and really nervous for this fight and all these people and cameras are actually making me shy and I'm forgetting what to say.
"I'm actually shaking right now and I hope this is giving Wlad some confidence - not really, there we have it."
Fury provided less antics today at the press conference than he has at previous media encounters - in September he dressed up as Batman and leaped over the top table to mock-fight someone else who had donned a Joker costume.
The bout was initially scheduled to go ahead a month ago today, but Klitschko had to postpone due to a calf injury suffered in training.
Fury, who has 24 wins from 24 fights and 18 of them knockouts, said that he did not want to say too much at today's press conference so as to not put off his opponent.
"I hope Wlad's trained really hard but I don't want to go on too much because I don't want to scare him off again like last time," added Fury.
"As we know, if I say a lot of stuff in the press conferences then we usually don't have any fights. So I'm going to wind it back in and just wait for the fight night.
"I didn't believe this fight was going to happen for a long, long time. And he's proved me wrong. This fight is actually going to happen."
There is one issue going into the fight, though, with Fury's camp unhappy over an agreement about which gloves will be worn on Saturday. This is expected to resolved at a rules meeting after Friday's behind-closed-doors weigh-in.
Pascal Lemesre
