By Barry Holbrook: Promoter Frank Warren revealed today that he has a replacement opponent on standby if Dillian Whyte pulls out of his fight against WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury on April 23rd.
Whyte pulling out at the last minute would be a huge blow to the event, and it’s unthinkable that he would choose that route.
Thus far, Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) hasn’t taken part in the publicizing of his fight with Fury, not happy with the purse split, and Warren is highly upset about his non-participation.
Fury’s promoters won the purse bid with a whopping $41 million to enable them to stage the fight. With that kind of money laid out, one can understand why Warren would be furious because there’s risk involved.
Although the Fury-Whyte fight will be a sellout, with 94,000 fans expected on the night at Wembley Stadium in London, it still needs to bring in a lot of PPV buys for it to be a success.
It’s unclear what the break-even number is for the fight not to lose money. Some boxing fans believe it’s 800,000 buys, which would be attainable with Fury & Whyte both working hard to promote it. Unfortunately, it’s been all Fury up until now, shouldering the burden with Whyte missing in action.
“He has certain obligations to publicize the fight, and at the moment, he’s in breach of those,” said Frank Warren to Secondsout about Dillian Whyte.
“His obligation is to help promote the fight. He signed up for certain things, as we did and that’s what he’s obliged to do.
“The truth of the matter is that we cover all bases,” Warren said about the potential of Whyte pulling out of the fight, leaving Fury without an opponent.
“Would you not think, for an event of this magnitude, of what we’ve sold, that we would not be covering that scenario? Of course, we cover that scenario,” said Warren about the potential of Whyte pulling out.
“All I want is for Dillian Whyte to do what is in the contract, and up until now, he has not done that. He is in breach,” said Warren.
It would be interesting to know who Warren’s standby heavyweight is for the fight. Ideally, Daniel Dubois or Joe Joyce would be potential replacements, as they would arguably be an improvement talent-wise over Whyte.
Whyte is reportedly angry that he’s only getting 20% for his portion of the purse while Fury gets 80%. It’s believed that the reason for the disparity is they went off by purses that Whyte and Fury had been receiving for their fights.
Fury had made massive amounts of money in his three fights with Deontay Wilder in the last two years, whereas Whyte made far less in his two fights against Alexander Povetkin.