Dillian Whyte – Fighting a Losing Battle?

Dillian Whyte – Fighting a Losing Battle?

By Aidan O’Connor 

It’s no hidden secret that Dillian Whyte is a great heavyweight fighter who always wants the top fights, calling out Joshua, Wilder, Fury, Bellew, Haye.. Any top fighter, he has called them all out.

So why is it that he hasn’t had the opportunity to once again to fight for the belts? Is it because Eddie Hearn is looking after ‘Golden Boy’ Anthony Joshua as he fears that Whyte could have a chance of dethroning him before he manages to get all of the belts? or simply Hearn doesn’t feel like he is ready for the shot?

This has divided much opinion, most of which is that Hearn is keeping the big fights from happening, others however disagree and feel that Whyte does not have the following or the names on his record to bring in the big numbers and that is why he doesn’t get the chances.

With Whyte not holding any of the main Heavyweight belts, the only way for him to earn his place is to beat the best fighters he can.

Since losing the title fight to AJ in 2015, Whyte has won 8 fights in a row, 4 coming from knockout/TKO and the other 4 from decision. His battle and rivalry with Chisora was superb to watch, the back and forth trash talk, Chisora throwing water in Whyte’s face at the Gloves are Off show and throwing the table across the room at the press conference had everyone talking. The pair had a slug fest which could’ve gone either way but Whyte came out on top. In this fight he showed that he had composure, power and movement. This was the first time the public had seen an amazing performance from him, worthy of a title shot? Apparently not.

He then went on to fight Tann in his own back garden forcing a TKO stoppage, not a big enough fight for a world title shot but a stoppage none the less. Then followed a WBC Silver heavyweight bout against Helenius who was 25-1, Whyte fought a great battle and won the fight by a unanimous decision and claimed the belt. Still no rematch with AJ was even spoken about.

When it was announced that Dillian Whyte was going to be fighting an undefeated 6ft 5 warrior in Lucas Browne, there were a lot of question marks as to whether this was the right fight for him or not. Browne going into the fight 25-0 winning 22 of his professional fights by knockout was always going to be a risk for Dillian however he didn’t see it this way. He was confident going into the fight and finished the job in round 6 with a deadly hook that knocked Browne to the canvas in arguably one of the hardest knockouts in recent years. After the bout he called out Deontay Wilder, a fight that upon hearing, immediately excited fight fans. Deontay however had no intention of fighting Wilder, he wanted the AJ fight.

In comes Joseph Parker. After losing to AJ by Decision and being the first to not be knocked out by the Champion, Parker turned his attention to Whyte. He had never been knocked down in his career even by the knockout expert Joshua… Until this fight. What was a very even first few rounds seemed to change when Whyte clashed heads with Parker in the second round knocking him down, this shouldn’t have been classed as a knockdown technically speaking but he proved he could do it legally when he knocked him down with a heavy shot in the ninth round. Parker also scored a knockdown at the end of the 12th which seemed to knock Whyte out on his feet but he retained composure and stuck it out to get the victory.

After winning this fight he called out everybody who wanted it: Fury, Wilder, AJ .. But you could tell that in his calling out of these fighters he was not confident he would get anything.

Dillian Whyte has shown time and time again that he is a world-class fighter. At the time of writing Fury v Wilder has been tipped to be the next big fight, AJ has his fight with Povetkin and Tony Bellew is set to fight Usyk. So where does this leave Dillian Whyte’s next fight?

I feel that he has proved that he deserves a shot and any other fight that he could take now, if he were to lose, could jeopardise all that he has worked towards. Is his ambition to just beat anybody anytime going to be the thing that proves too much or is his promoter Eddie Hearn going to keep him fighting against non-champions until AJ possibly unifies? All I know is AJ v Whyte 2 is the rematch a lot of fight fans want to see, whether that be for all of the belts or just the belts AJ currently holds.