By Charles Brun: Dillian Whyte has received his contract for his WBC-mandated fight against heavyweight champion Tyson Fur, according to his promoter Eddie Hearn.
Whyte’s lawyers are reportedly looking over the contract before it’ll be signed to get the Aprilmatrch against WBC heavyweight champion going.
With Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) not speaking since his promoters lost the purse bid a little over a week ago, some boxing fans believe he’s either going to pull out of the fight, as he did for his scheduled October match against Otto Wallin due to an injury, or continue to push for a larger purse split.
Fans just want to get this fight out of the way so that Fury can face the winner of the Anthony Joshua vs. Oleksander Usyk II rematch.
Whyte has the contract for Fury fight
“At the weekend, yeah,” said Hearn to TalkSport about Whyte having gotten his contract for the Fury fight. “So it’s being reviewed now by Dillian’s lawyers. I don’t envisage many problems.”
“I’ve got no involvement. I lost the purse bids. But Frank won’t really want me involved in the promotion which is no problem, I’ve got enough on my plate if they don’t want me to help in the promotion.
“So I’ll sit down with Dillian and say, ‘What do you want me to do?’
We’ll see if Whyte signs the contract or sends it back to Fury’s team, asking for changes. It’s difficult to imagine the contract being agreed to in a timely fashion.
With that said, if Anthony Joshua doesn’t retire after his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk, you can imagine the negotiations between him and Fury being pure chaos, lasting months.
Boxing fans are hoping that Joshua and Fury are the last two standing after these preliminary bouts for them in early 2022, but you never know.
Fury is fighting like a throwback journeyman now, whereas Joshua has seemly lost his nerve and become gunshy since his loss to Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019.
Will U.S fans be willing to pay to see Fury vs.Whyte on PPV?
It’s going to be REALLY difficult for the promoters for the Fury vs. Whyte fight to sell this thing to American boxing fans on ESPN PPV, as they’re planning on doing.
You can argue the only reason Fury’s past fights in the U.S sold on pay-per-view is that he was fighting the highly popular former WBC heavyweight champion.
In the promoters attempting to peddle Fury-Whyte to U.S boxing fans, that’s an overreach on their part. They might as well be trying to sell Fury vs. Dereck Chisora because it’s a PPV-worthy fight.
Hopefully, this fight still isn’t dragging on without having by the summer because it’s such a time-drain. Eventually, this thing will be over with and either Whyte will be history or Fury will have lost his WBC title after getting chinned.
Fury transformed by Sugarhill
With Fury, you just don’t know. With his American coach Sugarhill Steward, Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) has evolved into a crude mauling fighter with a fighting style that is more reminiscent of Chuck Wepner and Nicolai Firtha.
What on earth did Sugarhill do to Fury? He took Fury’s once-clever fighting style and turned him into an ugly mauling ham-and-egger.
The style that Fury uses now results in him getting hit a lot more than he used to, and it’s obvious that he’s eventually going to get knocked out unless he returns to how he used to fight.
If the WBC had ordered Dillian to fight one of the talented contenders instead of Oscar Rivas for the title eliminator, Whyte would have likely been weeded out.
Fury would be defending against the likes of Andy Ruiz Jr, Joe Joyce, Tony Yoka, Filip Hrgovic, Luis Ortiz, or Frank Sanchez.
It’s surprising how arduous this process has been for Fury to get this title defense out of the way against Whyte.
