Bob Arum wants to make Fury vs. Whyte as voluntary defense

By Boxing News - 11/19/2021 - Comments

By Charles Brun: Promoter Bob Arum says he wants to negotiate a fight between WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and his mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte as a voluntary defense for ‘The Gypsy King.’ Arum wants to negotiate the fight without the WBC ordering.

Arum told iFL TV that he wants to work a deal for the Fury-Whyte fight, as a voluntary given that Whyte is still in arbitration with the WBC, and they’re not going to order the fight while that case is still going on.

We don’t know how long the arbitration cause could drag on.  If they still haven’t settled it by early 2022, it would make sense for Whyte to negotiate the fight with Fury as a voluntary.

If Whyte wants the fight with Fury to take place soon, he needs to agree with Arum’s offer to negotiate the fight without the WBC ordering it.

Fury vs. Whyte as voluntary defense

“That was the right decision. How can you order something when you’re getting sued and the matter is in arbitration?” said Bob Arum to iFL TV on the WBC making the right decision by not ordering the Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte fight this week at their convention due to Dillian’s lawsuit.

Image: Bob Arum wants to make Fury vs. Whyte as voluntary defense

“The WBC carefully laid it out. Look, I talked to Tyson this morning and we discussed it plainly,” Arum continued. “If Joshua steps aside, Tyson is happy to fight Usyk.

“If Joshua doesn’t step aside, and it’s completely up to Joshua, that’s his contract, then Tyson said, ‘Why not, Dillian Whyte?’ We would then go ahead and proceed and make a fight between Fury and Whyte. It doesn’t have to be a mandatory.

“It doesn’t have to be anybody ordering it. It’s a good fight for Tyson Fury, and we’ll be talking to the Dillian Whyte people. They have to realize that it’s most of the time better to do things voluntarily than to force a particular fight.

If Whyte and his promoter Eddie Hearn believe that by waiting for the arbitration case to be settled it’ll read to them getting a bigger purse split, they’ll likely reject Arum’s suggestion of then putting together the fight without the WBC ordering it as a mandatory.

Joe Joyce possible backup for Fury

“That’s the way the rules are,” said Arum when told that Whyte’s promoter Eddie Hearn was upset, saying that it was ‘outrageous’ that Top Rank wanted Dillian’s purse split to be 80-20 in Fury’s favor.

“You take the purses that Fury has gotten in his last three fights, and you take the purses that Dillian Whyte has gotten and you compare them. If you did the percentages, it should probably be 90-10, but you don’t go lower than 80-20.

“If Eddie doesn’t like the rules, he should have been at the [WBC] convention arguing for new rules. But don’t after the facts start talking about what’s outrageous, what’s not outrageous. The rules are the rules.

“Yeah, Joe Joyce fights under the aegis of Frank Warren, who is the co-promoter with me of Tyson Fury and that would make a very, very good fight,” said Arum when asked whether Joe Joyce would be an option for Fury if the Whyte fight didn’t happen.

“But I think the preference would be to do the fight with Dillian Whyte, and hopefully we would be able to come to terms if the Joshua thing doesn’t change,” said Arum.

If Arum is unsuccessful in negotiating the fight with Whyte, then a great option for Fury is to face unbeaten Joe Joyce. Fury vs. Joyce would be just as big as Fury-Whyte, and it would be a voluntary defense on his part.

It sounds like Top Rank will attempt to get Whyte to agree to a purse split of 80-20 or 75-25 rather than the 55-45 purse split by WBC standards.

Eddie Hearn was pretty worked up when he heard that Top Rank wants Whyte’s purse split to be 80-20, and he said something close to the 55-45 split sounds reasonable to him.

Arum wants Joshua to step aside

“Look, it makes no sense to discuss it with Eddie Hearn,” said Arum when asked if he’s going to have talks with Hearn to have Joshua step aside so that Fury could face Usyk and AJ would then fight the winner..

“Joshua is an adult, and he appears to be a very intelligent young man and he’ll make his own decision whether he wants to step aside or go right into an Usyk fight.

“I would think if I was advising Joshua that he would be better off doing a step aside and then the fight [Fury vs. Usyk] winner, but I’m not Joshua and I’ve never talked to Joshua in my life. So it’s up to him.

“But again, it’s not up to Eddie Hearn. It’s up to Joshua. If Joshua does not step aside, of course, we’ll try to make a Fury-Whyte fight. If the numbers are okay, we’ll go ahead and do the fight.

“Frank for Queensbury and ourselves for Top Rank and look forward to doing the [Fury vs. Whyte] fight in the UK. I think all the success Tyson Fury has had in the United States, he owes it to the British public to do a fight in the UK.

“And also, the truth is, the fight fans in the United States don’t even know Dillian Whyte. I mean, let’s be honest about it. They don’t know who he is,” said Arum.

The way that Joshua sounded charged up in a recent interview about wanting to avenge his loss to Oleksandr Usyk, it doesn’t seem realistic that he’s going to step aside for a Fury-Usyk undisputed clash.

At this point, Joshua has his ability to reason and is led by his emotions in wanting to even the score by beating Usyk in the rematch.

It would make sense for Joshua to take the immediate rematch with the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk if he had a good shot at winning.

We all remember how Lennox Lewis avenged his knockout losses to Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman. Lewis was a much better fighter than Joshua, and the guys that beat him were nothing special.

It’s a different story for Joshua. He’s not as good as Lewis, and the fighter that beat him, Usyk, is far better than McCall and Rahman were.

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