WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder says he’ll eventually give #1 WBC contender Dillian Whyte a title shot if he keeps winning long enough. Whyte (25-1, 18 KOs) and his promoter Eddie Hearn have already asked the World Boxing Council to order the winner of Wilder’s next title defense against Dominic Breazeale to face Whyte in their next fight in a mandatory defense.
In an interview with Thaboxingvoice, Wilder said he wants Whyte to “stay patient” and wait for his title shot against him, because it might not happen after the Breazeale fight. The good news for Whyte is Wilder is giving him a ray of hope by saying that he’ll give him a shot IF he keeps winning. That’s a positive, right? I mean, if Whyte can keep winning, he’ll get his title shot, and everything will be hunky-dory. But you can’t expect Wilder to give Whyte a world title shot if he chooses to bypass the WBC eliminators that the sanctioning body wants. Look at Breazeale. He earned the fight against Wilder by fighting Eric Molina in a WBC eliminator. Why can’t Whyte fight in an eliminator too? If Hearn wants Whyte to be made the mandatory to Wilder, he just needs to ask the WBC to setup a final eliminator between Whyte and Luis Ortiz, and those guys can fight it out. If Whyte beats Ortiz, then he’ll get his mandated title shot against Wilder in two or three years. Whyte will get his shot.
Even though Whyte hasn’t fought in an official WBC ordered eliminator fight, Hearn wants Dillian to get a mandatory shot against the winner of the May 18 fight between Wilder and Breazeale. The WBC is considering the request by Hearn, and they’re expected to make a decision soon. It’s quite likely that the WBC will order Whyte to fight Luis “King Kong” Ortiz in an eliminator, and say that the Wilder-Breazeale winner must face the winner of that match. Hearn feels that Whyte should be installed as the WBC mandatory for Wilder because he’s been ranked #1 by the sanctioning body for close to two years without getting a title shot ordered. However, Breazeale fought in an official WBC eliminator two years ago in 2017, and beat Eric Molina to earn the mandatory position. In the meantime, Whyte could have fought Ortiz in a secondary eliminator to put himself in position to be the next mandatory, but instead Dillian has been fighting the likes of Dereck Chisora, Joseph Parker, Lucas “Big Daddy’ Browne, Robert Helenius and Malcolm Tann. Fighting those guys didn’t do enough for Whyte to earn the mandatory spot. The reason for that is simple. None of them were ranked high enough with the World Boxing council. The guy that Hearn should have matched Whyte up with was the talented southpaw Luis “King Kong” Ortiz, but for some reason he didn’t make that fight. Hearn and Whyte both mentioned Ortiz’s name, but instead went with the safe fights against journeyman Chisora, Tann, Helenius, Browne and Parker. Hearn could have saved Whyte a lot of trouble if he’d ignored those guys and instead matched him against Ortiz. Hindsight is 20-20 though. Hearn could have made the fight between Whyte and Ortiz, but he chose what arguably the softer path for Dillian in putting him in against Chisora, Helenius, Tann, Browne and Parker. Was this a mistake on Hearn’s part? Ah, yeah, Gilfoid would say so.
Wilder has other options for exciting fights after the title defense against Breazeale. There’s a rematch with Tyson Fury, and you never know if Wladimir Klitschko will come back and want a fight with Deontay as well. I mean, those are a heck of a lot bigger fights for Wilder than a simple title defense against Dillian Whyte, who struggled mightily in his two fights against Dereck Chisora. Whyte appeared to lose the first fight against Chisora in 2016, and in the rematch last December, he looked like he was going to lose that one too, but the referee took over and started penalizing Chisora left and fight. Chisora lost his cool in the 11th after being penalized, and Whyte took advantage of it by knocking him out. With a referee that took a more hands off approach to officiating the fight, Chisora might have won that fight. If Whyte can’t even beat Chisora in a decisive way, then how is Whyte expected to have a chance against Wilder?
After hearing that Wladimir Klitschko was considering making a comeback to potential fight Wilder in May, Wilder’s management contacted Wladimir’s team to to see if the interest in the fight was real or just an April Fool’s joke by a website. Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) made it clear that he’s interested in fighting Klitschko if he makes a comeback. That’s a fight that would interest him. There would be loads of money for Deontay to make fighting Wladimir rather than someone like Dillian, who the casual boxing fans in the U.S have never heard of. Trying to sell Wilder vs. Whyte on Showtime PPV would likely be a hopeless endeavor. It’s very unlikely that Klitschko is going to make a comeback to fight Wilder of all people. He’s too dangerous. The guys that Wladimir would likely target if he comes back are Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury. A rematch with Fury would probably be the fight that Klitschko, 42, would want first, as he lost to him in 2015 by a close decision. Those two were supposed to fight a rematch with each other, but Fury suffered an injury training, and then he had a mental break down, and didn’t fight for close to three years.