By Charles Brun: Dillian’ The Body Snatcher’ Whyte got some excellent news from WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman on Monday with him confirming that the sanctioning body intends on ordering WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to defend against Dillian next.
Sulaiman says the WBC has received the medical certification on Whyte’s shoulder injury from the British Boxing Board of Control, showing that he was injured and unable to go ahead with his fight with Otto Wallin on October 30th.
The WBC’s decision to order Fury to face Whyte suggests that the organization won’t be forcing Dillian to reschedule his fight with Swedish heavyweight Wallin.
Whyte pulled out of the match suddenly two weeks ago, saying that he had a shoulder injury. Many in the boxing world believe Whyte faked his shoulder injury after learning that the WBC said he would be next for Fury.
Although Whyte and his promoter Eddie Hearn have repeatedly maintained that he was injured, his decision not to reschedule the fight with Wallin looks fishy in the eyes of the fans.
What’s more interesting is that even Whyte is injured, and he’s banging the drum for a title shot against Fury in early 2022. Needless the say, it’s a horrible way for a contender to go into a title fight.
Instead of sticking to his agreement to fight Wallin, Whyte washed his hands of the fight and insisted on him fighting Fury next.
Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) is the WBC interim and mandatory challenger to the unbeaten Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs).
The World Boxing Council previously ruled that WBC heavyweight champion Fury had 30 days to attempt to set up a unification fight with IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk.
If no deal were made during that one month, Fury would need to defend against his WBC mandatory Whyte.
Of course, this doesn’t mean anything because Fury can always go the Franchise route if he wants to swerve the fight with Whyte or better yet, dump the WBC strap altogether and wait on the winner of the Anthony Joshua vs. Usyk 2 rematch, which is expected to take place next March.
“The WBC order was very clear, that the winner of Fury vs. Wilder has one month to try to secure the ultimate unification against Usyk, who defeated Joshua,” said WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman to Talk Sport.
“If they’re not capable of doing such, then the WBC would go with a mandatory, which is the interim champion.
“We have received from the British Boxing Board of Control the medical certification that Whyte could not fight Wallin because of the injury.
“So we are going to do what we promised, which is that way we are moving forward,” said Sulaiman about the WBC ordering Fury to defend against interim champion/mandatory Whyte next.
There’s a great deal of money to be made by Fury, 33, in facing the winner of the Joshua vs. Usyk II fight, and it’s too risky for him to fight anybody, let alone someone as desperate as Whyte.
Suppose Fury is elevated to Franchise champion or vacates his WBC title. In that case, Whyte will either be made the new champion by the World Boxing Council or ordered to face the next highest-ranked available contender. It would be up to the WBC to decide which direction they want to go in.
Unless Fury values his WBC title, he should vacate the belt and wait on the Joshua vs. Usyk II rematch winner.
It makes zero sense for Fury to take any fight right now because there’s too much money on the line for him in facing the Joshua-Usyk 2 winner.
If Fury vacates his WBC title, Whyte will likely need to fight one of these highly ranked contenders for the vacant strap:
1. Deontay Wilder
2. Andy Ruiz Jr.
3. Joe Joyce
4. Luis Ortiz
5. Joseph Parker
6. Frank Sanchez