By Charles Brun: The WBC reportedly revealed that the purse split for Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte will be 80/20 in favor of the champion Fury on Thursday. If no deal is reached during the negotiations, a purse bid will take place on January 11th.
There’s not much time for Fury and Whyte’s promoters to iron a deal before the purse bid on January 11th, and it’ll be surprising if they put much effort into it.
It’s still not a given that Fury-Whyte will take place, though, because Fury’s management may opt to have him take an easier fight. With Fury’s popularity, he doesn’t need the WBC title because it’s going to slow him down.
Fury wants to fight the winner of the Anthony Joshua vs. Oleksandr Usyk 2 rematch because there’s a TON of money he can make against one of those two.
Dillian stuck with 20%
Whyte had been hoping to get a 55/45 split. This is obviously jarring news for Team Whyte because the split that he’s getting is nowhere near what he and his promoter Eddie Hearn were calling for. There’s going to be a lot of crocodile tears for Whyte and Hearn about the WBC coming up with the 80/20 split, but they don’t have to agree to it if they don’t want.
In other words, they can move on and get in line to try and get a fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk.
Granted it might take the 34-year-old Whyte 3 to 4 years before he’s locked in as a mandatory for one of the other belts, but he should get there as long as he keeps winning and doesn’t do something silly like reject a title eliminator AGAIN.
The Daily Star broke the news on the WBC deciding on the purse split, but it still hasn’t been confirmed by Team Fury, Whyte, and the World Boxing Council.
If this turns out to be true what is being reported, Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) and his promoters at Matchroom Boxing likely won’t be too pleased about this split because it’s far off from the 45% that they were hoping to get.
Will Team Whyte take the fight?
Whether Whyte and his promoter Eddie Hearn will agree to the offer or walk away remains to be seen. It’s worthwhile for Whyte to take the fight if he believes he can beat Fury.
Even if it’s way off from the 45% that they wanted, if Whyte defeats Fury, he’ll be the new WBC champion, and he can use the title to face the winner of the Oleksandr Usyk vs. Anthony Joshua rematch.
The only way it’s a major negative for Whyte and Matchroom is if they don’t believe they’re capable of beating Fury. If they think they can win, it shouldn’t be a big deal that they got to take the small money this time around because it’ll just be a one-time thing.
Once Whyte has the WBC title, he can make a ton of money fighting the Joshua vs. Usyk 2 winner, and get the bigger split in a potential rematch with Fury.
Fury could vacate his WBC title
We don’t know if Team Fury will take the fight with Whyte or not, though, because Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said that Tyson will be fighting in March and NOT defending his WBC title.
Arum said that Fury will be defending his Ring Magazine belt against either Andy Ruiz Jr. or Robert Helenius next.
It’s unclear whether Arum will stick with that idea or if he’ll have Fury drop that idea and go ahead with the title defense of his WBC belt against Whyte.
Fighting Whyte is an extra hoop that Fury would need to jump through for him to get to the fight he wants against the Joshua vs. Uysk winner. It might not be worth it for Fury to take the Whyte fight when he’s got a lot of money staring him in the face against the Joshua-Usyk 2 winner.