Eddie Hearn confirms Dillian Whyte shoulder injury, Oct.30th fight off against Otto Wallin

Image: Eddie Hearn confirms Dillian Whyte shoulder injury, Oct.30th fight off against Otto Wallin
By Boxing News - 10/20/2021 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn has confirmed that  WBC interim heavyweight champion Dillian Whyte has suffered a shoulder injury and won’t be able to go ahead with his October 30th headliner against Otto Wallin at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Hearn says Whyte  (28-2, 19 KOs) had an MRI scan on Wednesday and spoke with a specialist, but he won’t carry on with his planned October 30th fight against Wallin (22-1, 14 KOs).

Matchroom’s October 30th show will still take place but without Whyte vs. Wallin in the main event. Without a good replacement fight, the October 30th show is going to be a trashcan fire.

Hearn saying nothing about rescheduling

Surprisingly, Hearn didn’t say anything about whether they would reschedule the fight between Whyte and Wallin once Dillian was healthy enough to fight again.

So there it is. If you look at the wording, Hearn says NOTHING about rescheduling the Whyte vs. Walling fight.

That means he’s not going to, and instead, we’re going to hear Hearn start banging the drum for Fury to defend against Whyte next. It’s so utterly predictable that it’s not even funny.

Gilfoid saw this coming months ago when the Whyte vs. Wallin fight was first announced. It was like an asteroid heading towards earth.

You just knew Whyte would pull out of the Wallin fight and then immediately start pressing for a title fight with Fury. If Whyte had the talent to beat Wallin, he would stick it out, but the big Swede would make mincemeat of what we’ve seen of Dillian in the last two years. Whyte looks shot now.

There’s a lot of talk on social media that Whyte will walk away from the Wallin fight and push to challenge WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury next.

Whyte is the WBC mandatory and interim champion for that belt, and it’s possible that he could force the title shot. If Fury resists the idea of fighting Whyte, he could be stripped of his title by the WBC if he doesn’t vacate it first or ask to be made the Franchise champion.

If that happens, Whyte would be elevated to the new WBC heavyweight champion, which would make Hearn happy.

With the WBC title in Whyte’s possession, he could use it as bait to face the Anthony Joshua vs. Oleksandr Usyk rematch winner next year.

Even without a belt, Fury would likely be given the first shot at the winner of the Joshua-Usyk 2 rematch because he’s more popular than Whyte, and he’s still undefeated.

It’s possible that we could see the heavyweight match between prospect Alen Babic (8-0, 8 KOs) vs. former two-time world title challenger Eric Molina (28-7, 20 KOs) be moved into the main event slot.

It’s not a great fight, obviously, but there’s not much else on the card that would serve the purpose of being moved into the headliner slot vacated by Whyte-Wallin.

Wallin’s promoter reacts to Whyte’s injury

“I’ve had some conversations with Eddie [Hearn] about this, but there’s no official confirmation that the fight is off or no official confirmation that the injury will preclude him from participating in the fight next week,” said promoter Salita to iFL TV on Whyte supposedly suffering a shoulder injury that has caused him to pull out of the Wallin fight.

“We expect to have news about that by the end of the business day today,” said Salita about Whyte’s injury.

“There’s a lot of red flags in this situation. Fighters obviously get injured in camp.

“That’s normal, but I’ve been hearing rumors about this happening for several weeks now. Dillian Whyte even said in several interviews, I can just pull out and fight Tyson Fury, but I’m a real champion, and I’m going to fight Otto Wallin.

“There are suggestions from people in the boxing community advising him to do that,” said Salita.