Tyson Fury could make a voluntary defense early in the new year after the WBC decided against making Dillian Whyte the mandatory challenger for Fury’s heavyweight title at the convention in Mexico. 

Whyte, the WBC’s interim champion, had expected to have his place as mandatory challenger confirmed on Tuesday. 

But, in a twist, the WBC announced that they could not order a Fury-Whyte fight until a lawsuit from Whyte is resolved. It was reported that a legal arbitration could take months to resolve. 

They also indicated that a fight between the pair would also see an 80-20 purse split in Fury’s favor. WBC rules about fights between full and interim champions could have a 55-45 purse split, although it is at their discretion to overrule that. 

“We want to get Tyson out early in the new year,” Frank Warren, Fury’s promoter, said. “That might be against Whyte but having only boxed once in 18 months, Tyson will want to be active.” 

Whyte spent more than 1,000 days as WBC No. 1 before shockingly losing to Alexander Povetkin last year, a loss he avenged earlier this year. 

He had been due to box Otto Wallin last month but pulled out with a shoulder injury.

Fury’s joint promoters Queensberry and Top Rank had argued that Fury should get a higher spilt of the purse because he was paid $20 million for each of his last two fights against Deontay Wilder, while they claimed that Whyte had been paid $350,000 for his fight with Povetkin. 

The WBC had previously ruled that Fury had 30 days to negotiate a deal with Oleksandr Usyk, the WBA, WBO and IBF champion, before he would be ordered to face the interim champion. But with Usyk contracted to a return fight with Anthony Joshua, whom he beat in September, that could not happen. 

Fury knocked out Wilder in their third fight last month to retain the WBC title he had won from the American in February last year. It was a fight that was pushed back twice because of the pandemic and then a third time, from July, when Fury contracted Covid. 

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.