Dillian Whyte has successful shoulder surgery

By Boxing News - 12/17/2015 - Comments

whyte555By Scott Gilfoid: In a real surprise, British heavyweight Dillian Whyte (16-1, 13 KOs) has just had shoulder surgery to repair a problem with his left shoulder that occurred during the 2nd round of his contest against Commonwealth heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) last Saturday night.

Whyte said he hurt his left shoulder when he nailed Joshua with a hard left to the head in the second that really hurt him. It’s unclear whether the injury first popped up during the training for his fight against Brian Minto last September, because Whyte completed of having a shoulder injury after that fight.

At the time, Whyte had said that he was only able to use his right hand against Minto, but he still felt confident that his left shoulder problem would heal in time for him to fight Joshua. The way that Whyte was forced to beat Minto using just his right hand had some boxing fans skeptical whether his injured shoulder could heal up in time for him to face Joshua less than three months later.

“Looks like surgery has been successful,” Whyte said on his Instagram. “Big thank you to Dr Jon Houghton and surgeon Livio Di Mascio. Thanks to all for your support & wishes. I will be back stronger next year.”

Whyte was only effective in the Joshua fight for two rounds last Saturday night. After the 2nd, he was mostly just using his right hand for power punches. Whyte was mostly using his left for jabbing, and it looked like he had lost all power in his hand. It was a limp jab rather than the snapping jab that you like to see from top fighters. Joshua ended up stopping Whyte in the 7th round after nailing him with a right upper cut to the head that put him on his back.

Whether Whyte would have beaten Joshua with a healthy left shoulder is debatable. If he were able to continue to get close enough to use his left hand, then I would say yes, but Joshua had made adjustments after the second round to mostly throw single power shots from the outside. Whyte would have had to attack him in a strong manner each time to get close enough to land his left. It would have definitely been possible for Whyte to win the fight if he had a healthy left shoulder.

“I had him out on his feet, he was stumbling around,” Whyte said to skysports.com. “I hit him and he stiffened up, but at the same time I hit him my shoulder went so I couldn’t really finish him off. I believe I can beat him, and not only beat him, I believe I can knock him out.”

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It’s going to take a while for Whyte to rehab his left shoulder in order to get him back to where he was before he suffered the injury. Depending on how bad the injury was, Whyte could be looking at a rehab time that could consume a good portion of 2016 for him to heal. Look at how long it took David Haye to come back from his shoulder surgery. He missed over a year of his career after having shoulder surgery well over a year ago. One would hope that the 27-year-old Whyte’s shoulder surgery was not as extensive as Haye’s because that could keep Whyte out of the ring for a long, long time.

The 6’6” Joshua did say that he would give Whyte a rematch because he wants to gain more experience from fighting him. Never the less, it’s doubtful that we’ll see a second fight between the two fighters in the near future. What Joshua was saying after the fight about wanting to give Whyte a rematch was likely just lip service that he was making in order to have something to say rather than something that will actually happen.

Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is already talking about wanting to have Joshua fight for the EBU heavyweight title against the winner of the Robert Helenius vs. Franz Rill fight for his next bout on April 9th in 2016.

Hearn has also talked of wanting to put Joshua in a world title fight in 2016, possibly against winner of the Charles Martin vs. Vyacheslav Glazkov fight for the IBF heavyweight title. If Joshua does both of those things and of wins both the EBU and IBF heavyweight title, then I don’t see how there would be any hope for a rematch between Joshua and Whyte in the near future. Joshua would be the IBF heavyweight champion and would be required to fight top 15 contenders.

None of the sanctioning bodies has Whyte ranked in their top 15 for some reason. It is hard to believe that the four sanctioning bodies have ignored Whyte all this time. It is baffling. If the sanctioning bodies continue to ignore Whyte after he comes back from his shoulder injury, then I think it could be many years before we see a rematch between him and Joshua.

The Joshua vs. Whyte fight took place last Saturday on Sky Box Office pay per view from the O2 Arena in London, UK.



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