By Scott Gilfoid: With Wednesday’s news of WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder fighting mandatory challenger Bermane Stiverne on November 4, promoter Eddie Hearn is hoping to put together a fight between Dillian “The Body Snatcher” Whyte and Dominc Breazeale for October 28. Hearn’s vision is to have the winners of the Wilder-Stiverne and Whyte-Breazeale fights to face each other.
“Let Dillian Whyte fight Breazeale and maybe the winners [of Whyte-Breazeale and Wilder vs. Stiverne] face each other,” said Hearn to IFL TV.
Hearn is not giving up on trying to get Wilder to fight Whyte. Hearn has been pushing for that fight for month’s now. Wilder has already let him know what his asking price is for a fight against Whyte. Wilder wants $7 million. So even if Wilder beats Stiverne on November 4th, and Whyte defeats Breazeale, the Wilder-Whyte fight still won’t happen unless Hearn pays the “Bronze Bomber” what his asking price is for him to fight “The Body Snatcher.”
Hearn has a VERY good shot at against the 32-year-old Breazeale (18-1, 16 KOs) to face Whyte (21-1, 16 KOs) on the undercard of IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s title defense against Kubrat Pulev on October 28 in Cardiff, Wales. If Hearn can come up with a big enough offer to Breazeale to agree to accept the fight on short notice with Whyte, he might take it.
It’s probably going to need to be a superb offer. Breazeale is 32-years-old, and ranked #5 WBO, #7 IBF and 7 WBC. Breazeale has a high enough ranking where he can probably get a world title shot in a year or so just by fighting 2nd tier guys that are no threat to beating him. As such, why would Breazeale want to take a risky fight against Whyte in the UK, and potentially lose out on his chance to fight for a world title?
Fighting Whyte in the UK would put Breazeale at a disadvantage. He could lose a controversial decision like we just saw with Dereck Chisora in his fight with Whyte on December 10 last year. A lot of the boxing public thought Chisora deserved to get his hand raised at the end of that fight. Instead, Hearn’s fighter Whyte was the one that got the ‘W’ in that contest.
Breazeale, 6’7”, has the size, power and boxing skills to defeat Whyte, but why would he want to put himself in the position of getting robbed potentially by fighting Whyte. Moreover, why fight on just 4 weeks’ notice? I don’t see the logic in that. Breazeale has already been training for a fight against Stiverne, but he’s a much different type of fighter than Whyte. Breazeale can’t use the same training that he was using for the 38-year-old Stiverne bout for a fight against the 29-year-old Whyte. Those are two different fighters.
Hearn has the money to get Breazeale to agree to fight Whyte, but I don’t know that he’d be willing to overpay to get him to take the fight. My guess is $2 million would get Breazeale to agree to take the fight with Whyte. Anything short of that, it’s doubtful that he would be willing to take the fight. It’s too risky on just 1 month notice to train. There’s only 24 days to go before Whyte is fighting on October 28th. How can you prepare for a risky fight in just 3 ½ weeks? It makes no sense.