Joshua was thinking of fighting Whyte on December 10

By Boxing News - 11/06/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Before IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua decided on fighting #8 IBF Eric Molina in his fight on December 10, he had been kicking around the idea of facing Dillian Whyte in a rematch. Joshua stopped Whyte in the 7th round last December in their competitive fight at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Whyte had Joshua out on his feet in the 2nd round after clipping him with a left hook to the head. If not for Whyte suffering a shoulder injury in the same round, he likely would have knocked Joshua out.

The shoulder left Whyte (19-1, 15 KOs) with just one arm for the remainder of the fight. Whyte had surgery to repair his damaged shoulder, and he’s slowly been coming back from the injury. Whyte will be fighting against Dereck Chisora (26-6, 18 KOs) on the undercard of Joshua’s fight against Molina.

Whyte has won three straight fights since his loss to Joshua. Whyte’s victories have come against Dave Allen, Ian Lewison and Ivica Bucurin. While it’s good news that Whyte has won his last three fights, it’s not a good that he’s showing that he can use his surgically repaired left shoulder to help him throw power shots with that hand. Whyte’s best power shot used to be his left hook. That’s no longer happening since he had surgery. The only thing Whyte can do now is jab with his left, and he’s not able to throw hard jabs. Whyte doesn’t have a good enough right hand to make up for what he’s lost with his left.

“One hundred and ten per cent,” said Joshua to skysports.com about a rematch with Whyte taking place in the future. “The fact I managed to knock him out doesn’t make him a bad fighter and doesn’t mean he can’t take a punch. It means I turned out to be the better fighter on the night. He’s gone on, rebuilt himself and is gaining valuable experience against the likes of Ian Lewison, David Allen and Dereck Chisora.”

It’s unknown if Whyte will ever regain the power in his left arm. The more time goes by the greater the chance that he’ll regain the strength. It’s obviously in Joshua’s best interest to fight Whyte before he’s regained the power in his left arm, because if he ever does, he could be a real threat to beating him. Joshua is going to be booked up until mid-2017 with fights. If Whyte hasn’t regained the power in his left shoulder by that point in time, then it’s probably not too realistic that he’ll get his strength back.

Presumably, Whyte has been working out on weights to regain the power in his shoulder. If not, then he should be.

You can understand why Joshua would want to fight Whyte again. Their fight last year brought in 600,000 buys on Sky Box Office pay-per-view. With that kind of money coming in, it’s surprising that Joshua hasn’t already fought Whyte a second time, because his fights since then hasn’t created as much interest.

“As long as he stays on course and I stay on course I’m sure this fight will happen. I even mentioned about fighting him on December 10 but he was scheduled in to fight Chisora,” said Joshua. But no “problem, we’ll get it on again.”

Joshua has to beat Molina to get to his fight against Wladimir in early 2017. Joshua will be a huge favorite to defeat the 34-year-old Molina, because the fight is a mismatch of the first order. Whyte has his own fight on the same card against former world title challenger 32-year-old Chisora. There’s a potential for Whyte to lose that fight if Chisora comes into the match in good shape, and he’s able to use his punching power to get the better of Whyte.

As bad as Chisora looked in his loss to Kubrat Pulev last May, it’s not likely that Whyte will lose to him. Chisora looked really bad in that fight, as if he stopped trying after a certain point. If Whyte can push a fast pace in the early part of the fight, he might be able to get Chisora to get discouraged and then he can dominate the rest of the fight and perhaps get a stoppage.