John Fury reveals all about life as gangland enforcer and 'putting boss through table'

John Fury, the patriarch of the boxing dynasty, has opened up about the time he worked as a gangland enforcer, including one time he put a crime boss' head through a glass table.

The gang boss stood at 6ft, weighed more than 20st and had a "square head like Frankenstein's monster," Fury said. Fury said the boss was surrounded by five henchmen and knew he could not take any chances.

"I walked straight over and hit him with a right hand, and then put his head through a glass coffee table," he said. It was an attack designed to show he wasn't intimidated by the gangster's fearsome reputation.

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But it also put him on a collision course with a man who, Fury claims, had 'allegedly killed eight or nine people'. For about five years in his early 30s, Fury - the father and trainer of former world heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury, as well as celebrity boxer and reality TV star Tommy Fury - says he worked as an underworld enforcer, Manchester Evening News reports

"I worked alone," he writes in his autobiography When Fury Takes Over. "Always. Maybe it was a deal gone sour, maybe somebody owed somebody else.

"People could call up and say they were getting bullied by somebody, or were in some kind of trouble, and for a fee I would go and sort it out in my own way."

But the job brought him into contact with some pretty unsavoury characters - 'real oddballs' as the former bare-knuckle boxer describes them. The reasons for Fury's dispute with the un-named gangland figure are unclear.

He only goes as far as to say it was over an 'issue with a friend'. But the consequences were potentially deadly.

After his initial onslaught Fury, who boxed professionally in the 80s under the name Gypsy John, and the crime boss had a 'full-on fight' outside the garage where their paths had crossed before scarpering when the police turned up.

Then a few days later Fury, now 60, says he got a knock on his door. Stood outside were two detectives who said they needed a word.

"I stood to one side, motioned for them to enter," writes Fury. "'Come in, say what you need to, then leave,' I said."

Fury says they were there to issue him with a so-called Osman warning, meaning they had credible intelligence that his life was in danger.

"The gangland boss has taken a hit out on you," the detective told him. "I understand you gave him a good hiding. If he dies in hospital, you understand that you'll be on a murder charge?"

"He won't die," Fury replied. "Besides, he's big enough to fight and he's got a will to live, that man.

"I'm fatalist. Whatever my destiny is, it's already written."

But behind the bluster, Fury was worried. "I was only in my mid-30s but felt much older that day," he writes. "I'm getting too old to be looking over my shoulder, I thought to myself."

Luckily for Fury his brother Peter, a one-time major figure in Greater Manchester's criminal underworld, got wind of the threat from his prison cell in York where he was serving a 10 year sentence for drugs smuggling. He used his connections to get word to the gangster and broker a peace deal.

But the feud wasn't over just yet. After Peter was released from prison, he began doing business with the crime boss.

And he discovered the bad blood was still simmering. Concerned that Fury might still be planning to retaliate, and determined to save face, the gangster wanted to smooth things over.

With Peter as the intermediary, a meeting was arranged in a shopping centre to set things straight. As undercover police supposedly watched on, Fury and the crime boss shook hands.

"Though I won't say we became bosom buddies, in time I too saw that he was a man of his word and could be trusted," writes Fury. "A year or so later, he even came to my garage and bought a few old cars from me. I wish him no ill."

While the death threat came to nothing, the incident proved to Fury, who in 2011 was jailed for 11 years after gouging a man's eye out in a fight at car auction in Belle Vue, he needed to distance himself from organised crime.

"I realize now just how lucky I was to have come out of that time in one piece," he writes. "Increasingly back then, I found myself looking at my children and wondering what the hell was I doing.

"I'd had enough of being an enforcer and felt that the longer I was in proximity to this world of nutters, the more the chance I'd lose my life and my kids would grow up without their dad. I had no intention of my family getting in harm's way.

"I'll always be grateful to have escaped that time in one piece."