Dillian Whyte is not a happy person right now with Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder choosing to reject the $3 million offer from Whyte’s promoter Eddie Hearn for a fight between them. Whyte, #5 WBC, wants a crack at Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title. The unbeaten Wilder (38-0, 37 KOs) would fight Whyte for the right amount of money, but the offer that was made by Hearn was $4 million too little.
Wilder wants $7 million for the fight with Whyte. The fight that Deontay Wilder really wants is a unification match against Hearn’s fighter Anthony Joshua. Wilder doesn’t like the idea of him getting a smaller amount of money to fight one of Hearn’s fighters.
Wilder would rather wait for the big payday against Joshua unless Hearn wants to pay him the $7 million that he’s asking for. Hearn isn’t likely going to do that because the Wilder-Whyte fight might not generate that much on Sky Box Office PPV. You never know. It might, but it would be a risky fight for Hearn to make if he gives Wilder $7 million. If Hearn gives Wilder that much, then Whyte will probably want similar money. That’s where things don’t work out. There wouldn’t be enough money to go around for both fighters. Hearn can get Whyte a world title shot against Wilder if he wants to badly enough, but it’ll cost a pretty penny to make that happen.
Whyte, 29, has some major things going against him getting a world title shot against Wilder. Here are the problems that hurt’s Whyte’s chances of getting a world title shot against Wilder:
– Whyte is an unknown in the U.S with casual boxing fans
– Whyte has already beaten by Anthony Joshua in 2015
– Whyte is coming off of a controversial 12 round split decision win over Dereck Chsiroa last December. The Matchroom Sport promoted Whyte did not look like the winner in that fight. Whyte looked more like someone who had been given a gift decision similar to the way Jeff Horn looked like he was given a gift decision over Manny Pacquiao last Saturday
– There’s no upside for Deontay Wilder to fight Whyte. Wilder gains nothing in beating a fighter that was already knocked out by Joshua and who probably should have lost his last fight against Chisora.
– It’s a risky fight for Wilder to fight Whyte. There’s a lot of risk involved in Wilder facing Whyte. If Wilder loses the fight to Whyte, then he can forget about getting a much bigger payday against Joshua. It would be convenient for Whyte if Deontay Wilder was to give him a title shot, but it wouldn’t help him unless he received a lot of money for giving Whyte the title shot. As I already mentioned, Whyte isn’t a big name in the U.S, so there’s nothing that Wilder gets from beating Whyte. There’s also the negative of Wilder fighting someone that was already beaten by Joshua, and who is coming off of a questionable 12 round decision win over Dereck Chisora in his last fight.
“Guys like Deontay Wilder are an embarrassment to heavyweight boxing,” said an unhappy Whyte to skysports.com. “All the great champions have losses on their record because they fought other great fighters and that’s the problem with Deontay Wilder, his last 10 fights have been with nobody. Why’s he avoiding? Because he knows I’m dangerous and he knows that he’ll lose the fight,” said Whyte.
If Whyte wants to get a world title shot, he’s probably going to need to do what Wilder did in becoming the No.1 ranked contender with the World Boxing Council. Wilder wasn’t given a world title shot before he become the mandatory challenger. Former WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne didn’t give Wilder a world title shot until he become his mandatory. Wilder didn’t get a shot until he fought his way to the No.1 spot.
Whyte will likely need to take the same path as Wilder unless his promoter Eddie Hearn matches against Joshua again in what would be an in house fight between his two Matchroom Sport heavyweights. It would obviously be better if Hearn built up the Joshua-Whyte 2 fight by having Whyte take on some good contenders to increase his popularity in the boxing world. Bu after the way ha Whyte struggled in winning a close fight against Chisora last December, it might be too risky for Hearn to match him against any of the good contenders.
Whyte will be fighting next on September 19 in a 10 round fight against a still to be determined opponent on the undercard of the Terence Crawford vs. Julius Indongo card at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska. The card will be shown on ESPN and ESPN Deportes. However, it’s unclear if Whyte’s fight will be shown on the televised portion of the card in the U.S. Being on a highly visible card in the U.S is great news for Whyte, but only if his fight will be televised and only if he faces a good opponent.
It would be a letdown if Whyte goes back to fight the type of opposition that he’s mostly been fighting since he lost to Joshua in 2015. Whyte has won his last 4 fights in defeating Ivica Bacurin, David Allen, Ian Lewison and Chisora. Bacurin, Allen and Lewison are not good fighters. Whyte has had enough confidence boosting opponents since losing to Joshua. It’s now time for him to start fighting the better contenders in the heavyweight division so that he can earn a world title shot the way other fighters do.
“We have offered him five times more money than he made for his last fight, but he doesn’t want to fight, so what’s the problem?” said Whyte about Dontay Wilder.
Whyte can help himself get pushed up the WBC rankings a little bit by fighting someone good in his next fight on September 19, but it’s very likely that Whyte will need to wait until Wilder fights Joshua in a unification match. It’s a waste of time for Whyte to talk about Wilder right now. That fight is not going to happen until after Wilder fights Joshua. If Whyte is lucky, he could fight the winner of the Joshua vs. Wilder fight in 2018. If he’s unlucky, he might not see a fight with Wilder or Joshua until 2019. I think that might be the case.
Wilder and Joshua will very likely end up fighting each other at least 2 times in back to back fights. Joshua already has a fight against Kubrat Pulev that will be taking place in the first quarter of 2018. Assuming that Wilder and Joshua fight each other after that, it’s likely that their 2 fights will eat up the remainder of 2018. Whyte could get a chance to fight the winner of the Joshua and Wilder fight in 2019. That depends though.
The winner of the Joshua-Wilder fights will be looking to fight the WBO heavyweight champion. As of now, Joseph Parker is the WBO champion. He’s got a fight against Hughie Fury coming up on September 23 in Manchester, England. When the smoke clears from the Parker-Fury and Joshua-Wilder fights, they’re going to meet up in a big unification fight. Whyte is not going to get first priority to fight any of those guys until all of the heavyweight titles are unified. That’s likely not going to take place until late 2018 or early 2019.