By Charles Brun: In a surprise, Frank Warren has come up with the winning bid of $41 million for Friday’s purse bid for the Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte fight. Warren’s bid greatly surpassed Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn’s bid of $32 million.
If Hearn had won the bid, he intended on placing the Fury vs. Whyte fight in late April.
With the 80/20 split, the guaranteed nurses for the Fury-Whyte fight will be as follows:
- Fury – $32.8 million
- Whyte – $8.2 million
That’s good money for the 34-year-old Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs), who only two fights ago was knocked cold in the fifth round by 40-year-old fossil Alexander Povetkin.
Fury vs. Whyte will play up big in the UK, but in the U.S, this will be like another Sefer Seferi or Tom Schwarz type of fight. American boxing fans aren’t familiar with Whyte, and the ones that do know of him see him as the guy that was knocked out by an ancient
According to Mike Coppinger, the venue for the Fury vs. Whyte fight is targeted for April at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
Whyte earned his WBC mandatory spot the easy way, beating Oscar Rivas in a title eliminator rather than one of the talented heavyweights like Frank Sanchez, Filip Hrgovic, Tony Yoka, Joe Joyce, and Daniel Dubois.
If Whyte had to fight one of those contenders for the WBC’s title eliminator, it’s fair to say he wouldn’t be mandatory. He’s too flawed, too chinny, and too basic.
The purse would have been much bigger for Whyte had his promoter Eddie Hearn gotten his way with the request of a 55/45 split with the World Boxing Council.
Had the WBC given Hearn his way with the 55/45 split, it’s a dead certainty that Fury would have vacated their title. Whyte then would have had to battle the next highest-ranked available contender in their rankings.
Currently, Deontay Wilder is ranked #1. It would have been interesting to see how well Whyte stood up to Wilder’s right-hand power.
Hearn has pushed hard for a larger split for Whyte, but Fury’s promoter asked the WBC for an 80/20 split based on the purses for their recent fights.
Fury made $20 million for his fight against former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder last October compared to the $300,000 that Whyte made against Povetkin in March 2021.
This is a risky fight for Fury taking on the big punching Whyte. If Whyte wins this fight, Fury can forget about fighting IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk in an undisputed championship and Anthony Joshua.
According to Hearn, Fury was the reason for the step aside deal imploding. He says Fury was insisting on taking a tune-up fight in March before fighting Usyk.
There wasn’t time for Fury to be allowed an unnecessary tune-up fight in the first half of 2022. It’s still unclear why Fury felt he needed a tune-up to get him ready for a fight with Usyk.
It’s likely that because of all the weight that the 33-year-old Fury packed on while celebrating his win over Deontay Wilder last October. Fury may have let himself go in the same way that Andy Ruiz Jr. did after his upset win over Joshua in June 2019.
For Fury to have had any shot at beating a talent like Usyk, he would have needed to time down to the weight that he came in for his fight with Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. Fury weighed 247 lbs for that fight.
Fury weighed 277lbs for his fight against Wilder last October and 273 lbs for his rematch with him in February 2020.
The 270s would have never worked for Fury against Usyk, as he’s too fast on his feet and would have made him look bad.
Hence, Fury wanted a tune-up so that he could have extra time to lose weight before facing Usyk.