By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye thinks that there’s a chance that IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) will be facing Dillian Whyte in a rematch for his next fight on June 25 at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
This is rather strange that Haye should be coming with this out of left field about a potential Joshua-Whyte rematch because Joshua’s promoter just named three easy mark heavyweight fringe contenders that he has in mind for Joshua’s next fight on June 25. Hearn named Eric Molina, Dominic Breazeale and Bermane Stiverne as the big three that he’s looking to pick from for Joshua’s next fight.
All three of them are terribly flawed unfortunate. WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder beat two of them in 2015 in defeating Stiverne and Molina in one-sided fights.
Joshua stopped Whyte in the 7th round last December after Whyte suffered a bad shoulder injury in the 2nd round of the fight. Whyte has subsequently had surgery on his left shoulder to repair the problem. He’s still rehabbing his shoulder right now, and it’s unclear when his shoulder will be strong enough for him to fight. I tend to doubt whether Whyte will be ready to fight Joshua in a rematch straightaway on June 25.
That’s a fast comeback from the type of serious surgery that Whyte had, and it would hardly be fair to him to throw him into a tough fight without even a tune-up. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Hearn went in that direction, because it would give Joshua a much better chance of winning a second fight against Whyte rather than waiting until he’s absolutely 100 percent.
If Joshua can beat Whyte with him at only 75%, then Hearn can permanently close the door on any future fights between Joshua and Whyte by saying he’s already beaten him twice. It would be a sneaky move on Hearn’s part to match Joshua against Whyte with him coming off of surgery, but if he wanted to ensure that Joshua never lose to him in the future, this would be one way of making sure that happens.
The 30-year-old Dominic Breazeale looked horrible in winning a controversial 10 round decision over journeyman Fred Kassi last year in a fight that Kassi appeared to win. In Breazeale’s last fight, he stopped 43-year-old Amir Mansour in a 5th round stoppage last January after being knocked down by him in the third round of the contest. Mansour suffered an injury and couldn’t come out for the sixth round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au80yFuURwE
“Breazeale and Stiverne sound great but there is a bit of word around of a Dillian Whyte re-match that I’ve heard through the grapevine – that would be a great fight,” Haye said to skysports.com. “I’m not sure if he is ranked in the top 15 but if he can get ranked then that is a fight I’d like to see. It’ll actually be more entertaining than the last fight. Although he got knocked out in seven rounds by Joshua, it was a good fight for seven rounds.”
Haye has a nice little mismatch scheduled on May 21 against someone named Arnold Gjergjaj at the O2 Arena in London, UK. I don’t know how Haye found this guy, but it’s something out of a Rocky movie where a completely unknown guy with a padded record is dug up and thrown into the ring with a guy that is world’s better than him in Haye. It’s an awful match-up, but I’m not surprised. I expected nothing less.