By Tim Royner: Dillian Whyte is saying the negotiations for a rematch against Anthony Joshua are dead in the water, so he’s now hoping that his promoter Eddie Hearn can setup a fight against former heavyweight world title challenger Dominic Breazeale (20-1, 18 KOs).
#1 WBC Whyte doesn’t like that #4 WBC Breazeale was made the mandatory challenger to WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder when he’s ranked higher than him in the World Boxing Council’s top 15 rankings. Whyte wants to rectify that by fighting the 6’7″ Breazeale so that the two of them can fight it out for the mandatory spot.
What’s unclear is whether Whyte would ever use the mandatory spot to force a title shot against Wilder if he beat Breazeale. There are some who believe that Whyte just wants the WBC mandatory position to use as a bargaining chip to get a bigger purse split for a fight against Joshua.
By Whyte telling Matchroom Boxing promoters Eddie and Barry Hearn that he’s got a backup option of fighting Wilder for his WBC title, they might be more willing to give him the purse split that he’s looking to get for the Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs) fight.
“I fight April 20 here [The O2] hopefully against Dominic Breazeale, Alexander Povetkin, Luis Ortiz or one of those guys. Let’s see what Eddie can deliver in the next couple of days,” Whyte said to skysports.com. “I would fight Dominic Breazeale because he is a big guy.”
Breazeale would be a tough fight for Whyte. If Whyte take the fight and loses, then that’s going to cause him to lose a huge percentage off the purse split that e’s looking to get for a Joshua fight. It won’t eliminate Whyte
s chances of getting a second fight with Joshua, but it will hurt his chances of getting the big money that he was hoping to get. Hearn will still make the Joshua vs. Whyte 2 fight, because both guys are with his Matchroom stable, and there would still be enough casual boxing fans interested in seeing them face each other that they wouldn’t mind if Dillian is coming off of a loss to the 33-year-old Breazeale. It would still be a major blunder on Whyte’s part to have turned down an offer to fight Joshua, and then losing to Breazeale.
“I think the time and the place is now. He doesn’t like the money. So the time and the place is not now,” Barry Hearn said to IFL TV about Whyte not agreeing to the offer for a fight against Joshua. “It has to be right for both sides. If we do disagree, as we do at the moment, we won’t disagree later on,” Hearn said.
Barry Hearn has the right view point of the Joshua vs. Whyte 2 fight. Hearn isn’t bothered too much if Whyte isn’t ready to accept the terms for the second Joshua-Whyte fight right now. Hearn is confident that the fight will get made later on when the time is right. It’s money in the bank. The two will fight. The only question is will there be as much momentum going into the fight as there is right now. If one of the two losses their fight, then it could hurt the revenue that the fight brings in.
“The fight only gets bigger,” Whyte said about the Joshua fight. “I’m ready and willing to fight anyone, but I’m also not going to be overlooked and underpaid or get the wrong terms,” Whyte said.
In theory, the Joshua-Whyte 2 rematch will only get bigger, but that might not be so if Whyte loses to Breazeale.
Whyte doesn’t understand why he’s not the mandatory for Wilder. The WBC wanted Whyte to fight in world title eliminator against Luis Ortiz, but he didn’t take the fight. Breazeale took his WBC eliminator against Eric Molina. There’s no mystery about why Breazeale is the mandatory challenger to Wilder, and Whyte isn’t. The moral to the story is when you have a chance to fight in an eliminator that has been offered by a sanctioning body, it’s important that you take it. Whyte seemed to believe that if he kept beating guys like Lucas ‘Big Daddy’ Browne and Robert Helenius, the WBC would eventually make him the mandatory to Wilder. That hasn’t happened. Whyte should have taken the tough fight against Luis Ortiz instead of going in another direction in fighting Dereck Chisora, Helenius and Browne. Those guys aren’t as dangerous as Ortiz.
“He never gets overlooked, and he never gets underpaid,” Hearn said in firing back at Whyte’s comment about him feeling like he’s being overlooked and underpaid by Matchroom Boxing. “He’s made far more money than I ever dreamed he would earn. Your life has changed. When it’s the right time and the right place, we’re going to do it,” Hearn said about the Joshua vs. Whyte 2 rematch.
