Tyson Fury told to carry on as champion by WBC chief Mauricio Sulaiman

Tyson Fury pictured after defeating Deontay Wilder last month (photo: Getty Images)

Hours after the Mail on Sunday alleged a farmer had been offered money to provide an alibi for Fury’s failed test in 2015, the Morecambe fighter made no reference to the claims in a post in Instagram.

Under a picture in which he and a friend posed in Batman and Robin outfits, Fury wrote: “We was doing a half-marathon today but got cancel for ovs reasons, but we gonna do a half-marathon at home, Batman & robin.”

And Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the World Boxing Council whose belt Fury won from Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas last month, said the allegations would have “no impact” on his reign as champion.

Fury and his cousin Hughie initially tested positive for nandrolone in 2015, which they subsequently blamed on eating uncastrated wild boar meat, citing a farmer called Martin Carefoot who claimed to have provided them with the product.

After an expensive and elongated stand-off with UK Anti-Doping, Tyson and Hughie received retrospective two-year bans and were able to resume their careers in December 2017.

In the Mail report, Carefoot denied having provided the Fury team with the meat, insisting he was offered £25,000 to make up the story in order to aid their case.

Fury’s promoter Frank Warren, who was not involved at the time, told The Sun he had previously been sent letters by Carefoot. He added: “Tyson has never ever met this man.”

And World Boxing Council president Sulaiman said the new allegations were irrelevant in regard to Fury’s right to continue to hold the organisation’s sanctioning belt.

Sulaiman told The Sun: “Personally, I prefer to believe Tyson Fury ahead of someone who has already admitted to lying in legal documents for financial gain.

“The person who has claimed he accepted money to lie should be the one on trial, in my personal opinion, especially when he has waited five years to tell his story.

“Secondly, around this time Tyson was not involved with the WBC, he did not fight Klitschko for the WBC belt, it was for other titles, so this issue does not impact on him being our heavyweight world champion.”

Lightweight Caroline Dubois won her opening bout of the Boxing Road to Tokyo Olympic qualifying event on Saturday. The London-born 19-year-old defeated Ala Staradub of Belarus on points and will next face Rio 2016 bronze medallist Mira Potkonen from Finland.