By Tim Royner: Highly rated heavyweight contender Dillian “The Body Snatcher” Whyte has volunteered to step in and face Tony “The Bomber” Bellew in place of the injured David Haye on December 17 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Haye pulled out of the fight with Bellew on Monday, citing a biceps injury he suffered while training. Now without a proper opponent, Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) has seemingly wasted a training camp in preparing for the Haye fight. Although Haye says the Bellew fight is merely postponed and not canceled, it still leaves him with no opponent for December. That’s were Dillian Whyte (22-1, 16 KOs). He wants his promoter Eddie Hearn to setup the fight with Bellew for December. Hearn also promotes Bellew, so it’s quite possible for him to put a fight together between the two of them.
Whyte hasn’t been training, but he says he doesn’t care. He’ll take the fight with Bellew without a proper training camp and still beat him. Whyte doesn’t have a scheduled opponent for his next fight. He was hoping to get a title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder for February 3, but he’s had no luck in getting him to accept the fight.
”Let’s not let the boxing fans down Eddie Hearn. I will fight TonyBellew in December and beat him up even without a proper training camp @SkySportsBoxing,” said Whyte on his Twitter.
Whyte wasn’t impressed with Bellew’s recent 11th round TKO win over Haye earlier this year on March 4 at the O2 Arena in London, saying to Skys Sports that he’s just a “fake heavyweight.”
This would be Bellew’s chance to prove to Whyte that he’s a real heavyweight by fighting him on December 17. Bellew has a training camp to get ready for the Haye fight, so he should be ahead of the game to fight a replacement opponent in Dillian Whyte. It’s been almost a month since Whyte defeated Robert Helenius by a 12 round unanimous decision on October 28 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. That was not a superior performance from Whyte, who spent most of the fight throwing wild, slapping shots that missed badly. Helenius even hurt Whyte in the 2nd round after tagging him with a right hand to the head. Off that performance, you’d have to favor Bellew to beat Whyte, especially with him not having trained seriously for the last month.
Whyte potentially beating Bellew is precisely the problem. Whyte likely would defeat Bellew if given the chance, and that would ruin the chances for Hearn to use “The Bomber” for bigger money fights like a match against former unified champion of the world Tyson Fury or a rematch with Haye. As soon as the news was released on Monday about Haye pulling out of the Bellew fight, Fury took to social media to call him out for May 5. That’s quite a long way away from where we are right now in November.
Bellew will be missing out on a payday if he doesn’t fight in December on his scheduled date at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Bellew was hoping to close the chapter on his rivalry with David Haye by fighting him on December 17th in a rematch. Haye’s bicep injury means he won’t be available to fight Bellew on that date. It’ll be a long time before Haye can face Bellew, as he’s talking about March 24 or May 5 as two potential dates for the Bellew-Haye rematch.
“If you want to prove yourself as a true heavyweight then fight me,” Whyte said to skysports.com about Bellew. “If he is struggling to knock out a one-legged man, how is he going to knock out a true heavyweight who always shows up to fight? It’s impossible.”
Bellew isn’t the type of fighter to turn down anyone in the heavyweight or cruiserweight divisions. The person that would stand in the way of Bellew using Whyte as a replacement opponent is their mutual promoter Eddie Hearn. If he’s looking at the fight from a business perspective, he won’t make that fight in a million years. A victory for Bellew would greatly increase his earning power in boxing, but the potential of him losing to Whyte would be very real.
Whyte is a big guy at near 250, whereas Bellew was a small 213 pounds for his last fight against Haye earlier this year on March 4. Bellew would be giving away close to 40 pounds against Whyte. Deontay Wilder proved in his last fight against Bermane Stiverne that weight doesn’t mean a lot in the heavyweight division. Wilder weighed 220 lbs. against Stiverne, who came in at 254 lbs. for that fight, and he didn’t make it out of round 1 against the Bronze Bomber. It’s possible that Bellew can do the same thing to Whyte that Wilder did to Stiverne.
We probably won’t get a chance to have that theory proven due to Hearn likely not making the Bellew-Whyte fight. Hearn wants Whyte’s value to be increased, but at the expense of a non-Matchroom Sport fighter in Wilder. Hearn isn’t going to sacrifice what is arguably his second biggest money stream that he has going for him in Tony Bellew against a guy that doesn’t have a huge fan base in Whyte. Hearn’s No.1 money fighter is, of course, heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. If Whyte beats Bellew, then Hearn can forget about using him to fight Tyson Fury or Haye. The interest wouldn’t be there from the British boxing public.
Bellew is likely going to sit and wait for Haye to heal up before he fights again. Hearn isn’t likely going to take the risk of putting Bellew in with Whyte and watching him get reduced to rubble on the canvas on December 17 at the O2 Arena. Whyte is too big for Bellew, who should still be fighting at cruiserweight at this juncture of his career. There’s no money at cruiserweight, so Bellew is trying to make 1 or 2 big paydays in the heavyweight division before he hangs up his gloves. If Hearn is willing to roll the dice with Bellew’s career, then he’ll let Whyte face him on December 17. Unfortunately, Hearn hasn’t shown himself to be a real risk taker when it comes to the match-making he does for his fighters.