When Dillian Whyte says he’s “had enough fights to justify being a world champion,” he is bang on the money. Whyte has earned a title shot over and over yet he has been made to wait an agonizingly long amount of time. At last, with a win over Alexander Povetkin on Saturday night, Whyte will be there, he will be denied no longer.
For even if the winner of the third fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder decides to swerve the ordered mandatory defence against Whyte, he will likely be stripped of the WBC belt. And as Whyte said when speaking with the South London Press, if either Fury or Wilder got stripped, he as current interim champ would automatically be elevated to full WBC champion. But Whyte doesn’t want that – he wants to fight Fury.
“If they strip him [Fury] (Whyte assuming, like most of us, that Fury beats Wilder in fight-three) I won’t need to fight no-one [to win the WBC title] because I’m the interim champ. I’ve had enough fights to justify being a world champion. I don’t want that – I want to fight Tyson Fury, because he says he is the best heavyweight alive and to have ever walked the planet. Hopefully, he is going to be a man of his word and not a coward and vacate the belt.”
No-one likes to see a fighter become champion due to another fighter vacating, and after all the waiting Whyte has been forced through he both wants and deserves the chance to get in there and take the belt from the defending champion – beat the man to become the man, as the saying goes. But Fury, via Frank Warren, has already said he will look to get it on with Anthony Joshua after that final rumble with Wilder, that he has zero interest in fighting Whyte. If this proves to be the case then the WBC will seemingly have no option but to strip Fury.
Again, no-one wants to see that. But whatever happens, credit goes out to Whyte. He could be thinking about taking the easy way, of simply taking the WBC belt if Fury vacated. But Whyte doesn’t want it that easy – he wants to win it fair and square.
In the meantime, all that stands in his way is seemingly hugely motivated and in top shape Povetkin. Whyte can almost taste the world heavyweight title, he’s that close.