By Charles Brun: The WBC will be reaching out to their heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to check on his “status,” which could see a move on their part. We could see the 6’9″ fighter elevated to Franchise champion. Fury’s promoter Bob Arum wants him to be promoted to Franchise champion so that they remove the thorn Dillian Whyte from underfoot.
It’s believed that if the WBC attempts to FORCE the Whyte fight on Fury for February 2021, then the next move will be for Arum to ask the governing body to make Fury the Franchise champion.
The WBC won’t likely turn down Arum’s requesting because there’s too much at stake in terms of money with the Joshua-Fury fight compared to the lesser Fury vs. Whyte match-up. Fury may choose to vacate the WBC title if the sanctioning body insists on him facing Whyte in early 2021.
Fury will take the fight with Whyte if there’s no other option available to him for him to get to the Joshua match. If Whyte is the guy standing in Fury’s way to get to the AJ bout, he’ll take the fight if there’s no quick way around him.
Fury to be contacted by WBC
“The WBC is in the process of contacting every champion to assess their current status and plans,” said WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman to Boxing Social.
“The WBC will be looking into each category and will review each case and rule taking into consideration the variables that have to do with each case.”
Whyte is a decent fighter, but he’s just a small step above Dereck Chisora in talent, and Fury wiped the deck with ‘Del Boy’ twice already. Whyte would likely be an easy fight for Fury.
After all the complaining Whyte has done for years about wanting his title shot for the WBC belt, it might be anti-climatic to see him getting beaten with ease by Fury when or if the time comes in early 2021.
It might be better for the WBC to spare the boxing public the disappointment of seeing a Fury-Whyte fight by elevating ‘The Gypsy King’ the ‘Franchise champion.’
Fury needs to be free of the Whyte time-wasting fight for him proceed forward to face IBF/WBA/WBO champion Anthony Joshua for the undisputed heavyweight championship in the summer of 2021.
Joshua and Fury have agreed to a two-fight deal for 2021, and they only impediments from keeping those clashes from taking place are their mandatory defenses due.
Usyk mandatory due for Joshua in 2021
Joshua has WBO mandatory Oleksandr Usyk holding him back, and his promoter Eddie Hearn is trying to figure out how to deal with that obligation.
The WBC has already made Canelo Alvarez and Vasily Lomachenko their ‘Franchise champion,’ which has freed them up from having to make mandatory defenses of that title. Canelo and Lomachenko now will never need to defend their WBC titles against mandatory challengers ever again, which for them and a lot of boxing fans, is a good thing.
The promoters for the two fighters can select opponents that the fans want to see instead of guys that the WBC put in the position to become mandatory challengers.
Sometimes the WBC gets it right by ranking talented fighters at the top of their rankings, but in a lot of cases, they put guys that have little in the way of talent or popularity at the top. As a result, you see a lot of mismatches among the different weight classes when the WBC champions are defending against their mandatory challengers.
In Whyte’s case, he did very little to become WBC mandatory. Instead of facing a talented fighter like Luis Ortiz, Fury, Oleksandr Usyk, or Andy Ruiz Jr in a WBC heavyweight title eliminator, Whyte fought Oscar Rivas.
The WBC arguably made it too easy for Whyte to become mandatory by selecting Rivas, a fighter who’d never beaten anyone of note aside from an older fringe contender in Bryant Jennings.
Whyte brings little to the table
Had Whyte needed to fight Fury, Ortiz, Usyk, or Ruiz in the WBC title eliminator, he likely would have been weeded out, and there would be no reason to discuss him as the mandatory challenger. That’s why it would be a good thing for Fury to be elevated to the ‘Franchise champion’ right now.
The lack of popularity for Whyte makes him a poor choice for Fury to be fighting next year. It would be one thing if Fury were forced to fight a superstar fighter that the fans wanted to see him fight, but that’s not what we have here.
It would save him time in taking on lesser opposition that the boxing world doesn’t want to see. Whyte has some fans in the UK, but he’s not widely known elsewhere.
Hearn got worked up on Friday in complaining about Top Rank promoter Bob Arum comparing Whyte to Otto Wallin and Tom Schwarz in terms of the type of opponent he’d be for Fury. But the fact is, Whyte stands very little chance of beating Fury aside from getting lucky with him suffering a cut that causes the match to be halted.
