By William Lloyd: Tyson Fury isn’t in a big rush to confirm a fight against interim WBC heavyweight champion Dillian’ The Body Snatcher’ Whyte for early 2022.
Fury’s co-promoter Frank Warren says it’ll be Tyson that decides what he wants to do for his next fight. As of now, he’s not in a hurry to fight Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs).
The World Boxing Council will be meeting for their convention in mid-November, and they may order Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) to defend against his mandatory Whyte.
If the WBC orders Fury to defend against Whyte next, as many believe they will, it’ll be up to him to decide whether to go along with their ruling.
If Fury chooses not to defend against Whyte, he could go the Franchise route to continue to be a champion. With Fury’s popularity, he doesn’t need a world title to validate him in the eyes of the boxing world. The fans already know he’s one of the best, if not the best, heavyweight in the division.
That being the case, if the WBC elects to try and force Fury to fight Whyte next, they could see their title vacated.
“I don’t think anything will happen until the WBC has their convention, which is later this month, and I don’t think that’s going to happen until then,” said Warren to TalkSport on Fury.
“There’s no rush, and there’s no rush from Tyson’s perspective. As I’ve said to everybody, it doesn’t matter what anybody says. He [Fury] will do what he wants to do.
“If the deal is right, he’ll do it. If he doesn’t want to do it, he won’t do it. He’s his own man,” said Warren about Fury.
On Fury’s side, there’s no need for him to take on Whyte when he’s in the position to get a massive payday against the winner of the rematch between Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk in 2022.
It’s highly doubtful that the Joshua – Usyk winner will choose to fight Whyte next if he’s elevated to WBC champion over the unbeaten Fury.
The difference in money that can be made in a fight with Fury compared to Whyte would be huge for the Joshua vs. Usyk 2 winner, and they’ll not want to take the lesser-paying fight.
Fury will still likely get the winner of that fight even without the WBC title in his possession, so he doesn’t have to fight Whyte unless he wants to, not because he’s being ordered to face him.
Recently, the WBC ruled that Fury has 30 days to put together a unification fight with IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.
However, that’s not going to be possible because Anthony Joshua has already exorcized his rematch clause in the contract for his recent fight against Usyk on September 25th, which is forcing his hands to face him immediately.
Whyte, 33, recently pulled out of his scheduled October 30th fight against Otto Wallin, saying he had injured his shoulder.
The timing of the injury, which came after the WBC ruled that Fury would need to defend against him if he didn’t set up a unification fight with Usyk, has many boxing fans believing that Dillian faked the injury.
Despite Whyte’s remarks about his injury being actual, many boxing fans continue to believe that he’s not hurt and is only interested in getting the big payday fight against Fury.