Bob Arum wants to make Fury versus Whyte as voluntary defense
Promoter Bob Arum has said he would like to negotiate a fight between WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and his mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte as a voluntary defense for ‘The Gypsy King.’ Arum wants to negotiate the fight without the WBC ordering.
Arum told iFL TV that he wants to work a deal for the Fury-Whyte fight, as a voluntary given that Whyte is still in arbitration with the WBC, and they’re not going to order the fight while that case is still going on.
We don’t know how long the arbitration cause could drag on. If they still haven’t settled it by early 2022, it would make sense for Whyte to negotiate the fight with Fury as a voluntary.
If Whyte wants the fight with Fury to take place soon, he needs to agree with Arum’s offer to negotiate the fight without the WBC ordering it.
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“That was the right decision. How can you order something when you’re getting sued and the matter is in arbitration?” said Bob Arum to iFL TV on the WBC making the right decision by not ordering the Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte fight this week at their convention due to Dillian’s lawsuit.
Dillian Whyte Tyson Fury: “The WBC carefully laid it out. Look, I talked to Tyson this morning and we discussed it plainly,” Arum continued. “If Joshua steps aside, Tyson is happy to fight Usyk.
“If Joshua doesn’t step aside, and it’s completely up to Joshua, that’s his contract, then Tyson said, ‘Why not, Dillian Whyte?’ We would then go ahead and proceed and make a fight between Fury and Whyte. It doesn’t have to be a mandatory.
“It doesn’t have to be anybody ordering it. It’s a good fight for Tyson Fury, and we’ll be talking to the Dillian Whyte people. They have to realize that it’s most of the time better to do things voluntarily than to force a particular fight.
If Whyte and his promoter Eddie Hearn believe that by waiting for the arbitration case to be settled it’ll read to them getting a bigger purse split, they’ll likely reject Arum’s suggestion of then putting together the fight without the WBC ordering it as a mandatory.
Joe Joyce Possible Backup For Fury:
“That’s the way the rules are,” said Arum when told that Whyte’s promoter Eddie Hearn was upset, saying that it was ‘outrageous’ that Top Rank wanted Dillian’s purse split to be 80-20 in Fury’s favor.
“You take the purses that Fury has gotten in his last three fights, and you take the purses that Dillian Whyte has gotten and you compare them. If you did the percentages, it should probably be 90-10, but you don’t go lower than 80-20.
“If Eddie doesn’t like the rules, he should have been at the [WBC] convention arguing for new rules. But don’t after the facts start talking about what’s outrageous, what’s not outrageous. The rules are the rules.
“Yeah, Joe Joyce fights under the aegis of Frank Warren, who is the co-promoter with me of Tyson Fury and that would make a very, very good fight,” said Arum when asked whether Joe Joyce would be an option for Fury if the Whyte fight didn’t happen.
“But I think the preference would be to do the fight with Dillian Whyte, and hopefully we would be able to come to terms if the Joshua thing doesn’t change,” said Arum.