Marriott normally lives in Sheffield with his wife and their four children, but he determined a temporary trip across the Pennines to camp out with Fury, his wife and their seven children was essential to achieve his aims.
“He didn’t look that good against [Francis] Ngannou, so I thought I needed to get to him as quick as possible,” explains Marriott, who embarked on a career in nutrition after recovering from cancer at the age of 27 and having worked in fast food restaurants in his younger years.
“He’s never going to be body-beautiful – to get him looking body-beautiful it would take a year or two,” he adds. “For this camp, it was about being fit and strong.”
With Fury’s undisputed champion status on the line, preparations for the biggest fight of his career – and the biggest boxing showdown of the 21st century – began in earnest.
At the outset, Marriott accompanied the Furys on a family holiday to Jeddah, before dodging the “pandemonium” of their home in Morecambe in favour of the relative calm of an adjacent annexe.
“I said ‘It’s not a holiday for you’,” recounts Marriott. “It can be for your kids and your missus, but for you, that’s the start of training camp.”