Joshua says he almost had a physical altercation with Whyte

By Boxing News - 12/04/2015 - Comments

whyte54By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten #2 WBC heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua (14-0, 14 KOs) says he almost got into a physical altercation with unbeaten Dillian Whyte (16-0, 13 KOs) when the two of them were filming the ‘Gloves Are Off’ television special for Sky Sports.

The two British heavyweights had to be separated by security to keep them from throwing blows. It would have been a pity if an actual fight had taken place, because an injury might have resulted and that could have ruined things for their fight this month in eight days from now on December 12th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

Whyte already beat Joshua before in the amateur ranks in putting him down twice. Joshua wants to try and avenge the loss, and he’s going to try to do that. If not, then it’ll be Whyte moving forward with his career and Joshua being left behind to try and pick up the broken pieces of what could have been.

“I was expecting there to be a dust-up in the Sky Sports courtyard. Shout out to the security, they did a job and kept us apart,” Joshua said. “We did have a bit of a square off, a few words off camera as we were leaving. We had a few words to say to each other.”

Whyte, 27, makes no secret of the fact that he simply doesn’t like Joshua. He sees him as a spoiled phony, a fighter that won a gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, and who now is heavily hyped because of that. Whyte wants to whip Joshua on 12/12 and put him in his place to expose him for what he is, and make him humble.

A win for Whyte will likely give him a top 5 ranking with the World Boxing Council. Surprisingly, Whyte isn’t ranked by any of the sanctioning bodies despite the fact that he’s breezed through similar competition as Joshua has. You can say that Whyte would have a perfect knockout record if he had fought the same guys that Joshua has fought, because there’s nobody on Joshua’s resume that stands out as being good enough to go the distance with Whyte unless he wanted to go the distance with that fighter.

“There is a fight when you have got to stay cool, calm and relaxed and then you have to sit across the table with someone that you don’t really get along with and that’s where you are really going to see that animosity and that atmosphere is going to be bad energy,” Joshua said. “There was bad energy in the air and that’s what the ‘Gloves Are Off’ was about.”

YouTube video

Whyte and Joshua will be fighting for the vacant British heavyweight title in a little over a week from now. Joshua, 6’6″, will have his Commonmwealth heavyweight strap on the line for the fight. The titles are pretty much meaningless though, as these are only domestic level straps. What’s more important is the fact that the winner moves on towards an eventual world title shot against either the talented WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder or against newly crowned IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champion Tyson Fury.



Comments are closed.