By Barry Holbrook: Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn wants the WBC to strip heavyweight champion Tyson Fury if he postpones his title defense against Deontay Wilder a second time rather than face him on October 9th.
Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has been sitting on the WBC title for the last year and a half since winning the belt in February of 2020.
The pandemic has gotten in the way of Fury returning to the ring as quickly as he’d like to have, but he and his promoters haven’t helped matters by trying to walk away from their contractual obligations to Wilder.
There was a rematch clause from Wilder-Fury fight from last year, and rather than take care of that, Fury tried to walk away, which proved to be a mistake on his part.
It went arbitration and Fury lost, and now he’s stuck having to face Wilder on October 9th. This is a fight that Fury could have taken care of in 2020, but he made a mistake in trying to walk away from the Wilder trilogy match.
Dillian waiting for his title shot
Hearn promotes the WBC mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte, who has been waiting for over two years for his title shot since defeating Oscar Rivas in a title eliminator in July 2019.
“I want it to happen 100 percent,” said Hearn to The Express on him wanting Fury to fight Wilder on October 9th.
“I want a winner of that finally sorted so we can try again to make Anthony Joshua’s undisputed fight, but if it doesn’t happen then the WBC have to finally put Fury into recess.
“Fury has not boxed since February 2020 and if he doesn’t box in October then it will be almost two years since that title was defended. Dillian Whyte has been sitting there as interim champion, desperate and deserving of a shot.”
“When it gets to two years and everyone else has managed to fight, something has got to happen,” said Hearn.
Fury has never proven to be a good heavyweight champion in terms of making defenses. I mean, we saw what happened after Fury dethroned IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
Rather than defend the belts, Fury sat around, celebrating his victory over Wladimir for 2 1/2 years before finally returning to the ring in 2018 against Sefer Seferi.
Fury is a good contender, but he’s proven to be a lousy champion as far as making title defenses. You got to feel sorry for Whyte because he’s lost a lot of time with his career, and he could up waiting even longer if Fury postpones the Wilder fight a second time.
You can argue the only reason Fury has chosen to hold onto his WBC belt is for leverage to get a better deal with Anthony Joshua in 2022 if the two wind up fighting.