Dillian Whyte is making up for lost promotional time.
The Jamaican-born, London resident has stayed mum for nearly the entire build-up toward his showdown with Tyson Fury for Fury’s WBC heavyweight title that takes place this Saturday, April 23, at Wembley Stadium in London, but has recently come out of his shell.
Whyte was a no-show at the opening press conference in London in March and has refused media requests. Despite his absence from that proceeding, the fight is expected to receive a record crowd of 94,000 people, a seemingly sure sign of Fury’s drawing power. It helps that the Manchester native has not fought on his home soil for several years.
Whyte adamantly objected to the notion that the fight was being sold on the basis of Fury’s appeal alone.
“This ain’t the Tyson Fury show,” Whyte told BT Sport. “This is the Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte show. From where I stand it’s the Dillian Whyte-Tyson Fury show…Obviously he’s heavyweight champion so I understand what they’re doing and what they’re saying or whatever.
“But you can’t buy a high-performance car and not put high performance fuel in it. That’s what they’re trying to do.”
Whyte’s promotional silence presumably was prompted by his unhappiness with the financial split (80/20 in favor of Fury per a WBC ruling) and unmet financial incentives, despite the fact that the more than $7 million he stands to gain from the fight is a career high for him; the winner gets another $4 million. Whyte Fury’s promoter Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotions, who co-promotes Fury with Top Rank Inc., won the rights to the bout with a $41 million purse bid. Whyte suggested some of his demands have recently been met, hence his openness to an interview.
“They (Team Fury) won the fight and now they’re trying to treat me like nothing,” Whyte said. “They don’t want to pay anything, they don’t want to look after things properly, they wanted to just say, ‘Well, we won the fight. You have to do what we say.’
“No, it’s not. I don’t have to do what you say. I’m my own man, I do what I want to do, unless you wanna play ball right and do things properly and sit down with my team and work stuff out. Now, last minute, they’re trying to work stuff out now. That’s why we’re doing this interview now.”
Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) rejected the impression that Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) had gotten under his skin with all the trash talking that went on while Whyte was silent.
“I don’t care what Tyson Fury says,” Whyte said. “He says a lot of sh!t. His mouth is like a toilet. Keeps on flushing and flushing and flushing. That’s Tyson Fury. Any random sh!t that comes out of his mouth. I don’t really care about what he says or what he does.
“We’re gonna get in there and we’re gonna fight regardless…I don’t care about mind games. I’m a fighting warrior. If he wants it, anytime, anywhere, I’m down. I don’t give a f— about this and that and the other. He can say what he wants. You can’t get in my head.”