Athletes "deserve a million times more" - Fury

[Kyng]

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/gene...85973.html

Tyson Fury says athletes deserve “a million times more” because of the sacrifices they make for their sport.

Fury was talking on one of his Instagram posts while going for a winter run.

The British heavyweight boxer is gearing up for a potential mega-fight with Anthony Joshua later this year, although he is expected to fight once more before the big showdown.

“A little bit of behind the scenes,' Fury said. "People only see the glitz and the glamour of boxing on the night and all the entertainment.

"But they don't see the hard work which goes in. They don't see the running in the rain, running in the snow and the cold.

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Well, this is an... unusual opinion. Most of the time, people are complaining that athletes are heavily overpaid!

Still, I have no doubt that there are very difficult parts of the job that nobody ever sees. The thing is... that's also true of garbage collectors, doctors, CEOs, and plenty of other jobs on every step of the career ladder. But if everybody "deserves a million times more" for the hard parts of their job that the outside world never sees, then we'll be right back where we started ...

[Jarkko]

Well, this is an... unusual opinion. Most of the time, people are complaining that athletes are heavily overpaid!

Yes. And I am one of them. Sorry Mr. Fury. I say you are full of crap.

Yes, athletes do put in a lot of work, but what is the net gain to society other than entertainment? Why should athletes make that much more than doctors or nurses, for example? To me this comment by Tyson Fury comes across as selfish, not taking into account that some people are legitimately grossly underpaid for the amount and nature of work that they do. Whereas he gets millions, perhaps tens of millions, of dollars to punch people in the face, per fight.

[Kyng]

Yeah, he certainly does come across as selfish .

After all, the only justification for sky-high sports salaries that makes any sense to me is "Millions of people are willing to pay to see them play their sports". And even then, that's only true at the very top echelons of sport (so, for people like himself). For example, in the English Football league, the average weekly salary for a Premier League player is £50,000. However, according to these figures, this drops to around £8,000 per week in the Championship, then down to around £2,000 for League One and £1,500 for League Two. And yet, everything that Tyson Fury talks about will be exactly the same for those players in the lower leagues: it's not as the Premier League players are working 25 times as hard, or are 25 times better at football, than League One players (although they may well be entertaining 25 times as many people !)

Still, I wouldn't even consider League Two players to be underpaid. I think that, if you offered a £1,500-a-week job to most non-footballers, then they'd happily take it!