By Charles Brun: WBC interim heavyweight champion Dillian Whyte has reportedly suffered a shoulder injury training, resulting in his October 30th fight being canceled. Nothing is official right now, and Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn hasn’t verified Whyte’s injury and the battle with Wallin being off.
Even so, Whyte’s shoulder injury, which some boxing fans aren’t believing, won’t stop him from getting his mandated title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
Wallin’s promoter Dmitriy Salita wants the fight with Wallin to be rescheduled once his shoulder injury heals, but it’s unknown if that will happen. If the contract allows Whyte to walk away from the fight in the case of an injury, Wallin can’t do much.
Can Dillian walk away from the Wallin fight?
What’s unclear is whether Whyte’s injury means he can walk away from the risky fight against the big 6’6″ Swede Wallin (22-1, 14 KOs). If so, it means Whyte will get his mandated title shot against WBC champion Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) next without worrying about losing to Wallin.
Fury doesn’t have an opponent for his next fight, and it would seem evident that interim WBC champion Whyte will be the guy under the WBC’s ruling, as long as he can walk away from his match against Wallin.
The World Boxing Council recently made a ruling that the Fury vs. Deontay Wilder 3 winner would have thirty days to set up an undisputed clash with IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk or take on interim WBC champ.
With interim champion Whyte now apparently injured, he can theoretically walk away from the Wallin fight and face Fury straightaway once his shoulder injury heals.
Of course, it’ll be up to Fury whether he wants to fight interim WBC champion Whyte and risk losing all the loot he’ll make from fighting the winner of the Joshua vs. Oleksandr Usyk rematch next year.
If Fury chooses not to fight interim champion Whyte, he would need to either vacate his WBC title or ask the sanctioning body to make him Franchise champion so that he could swerve the fight.
It would be fitting because many fans now believe Whyte is ducking the fight with Wallin with his shoulder injury.
Wallin’s promoter wants Whyte fight rescheduled
“If it is an injury, he [Whyte] should heal, and they should reschedule this event. That would be the fair thing to do,” said Wallin’s promoter Dmitriy Salita to Sky Sports.
“It would not be fair to the sport of boxing for Dillian Whyte to have an injury, to be able to be mandated to fight Fury,” Salita continued. “It was truly the right eliminator for the fight with Fury.
“We’re [Wallin] definitely going to petition the WBC to make a decision. That’s what should be decided – the winner of Whyte-Wallin fights Tyson Fury. The WBC will pass what I feel is an important decision,” said Salita.
It’ll be up to the WBC to decide whether Whyte will still need to face Wallin or if he’ll be allowed to walk away from the fight to challenge Fury.
With the millions that Whyte can make fighting WBC champion Fury, you could understand why he would want to walk away from the dangerous fight against Wallin.
As bad as Whyte has looked in the last two years against 42-year-old Alexander Povetkin and 40-year-old Mariusz Wach, he could lose to Wallin. As a result, all that dough that Whyte would have made from a Fury fight would be down the drain, gone forever.
There’s talk on social media that the ticket sales for the Whyte vs. Wallin fight on October 30th were poor, resulting in many boxing fans believing that to be the valid reason for why the contest won’t happen.