“I Would Love To Beat Joshua Then Go Fight Wilder And Beat Him”
Plenty of fight fans feel there are too many rematch clauses entered into fight contracts these days. It does seem as though every fight we see these days, be it a big fight or a not so big fight, has a rematch clause in place. Dillian Whyte has stated that it is the insistence from Eddie Hearn that a rematch clause is in place in the contract for an August 12 fight between he and Anthony Joshua that is preventing him from signing on the dotted line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gobt0A7X9Ug
Talking with Talk Sport once again, Whyte said he will happily face Joshua – and, he believes, beat him – if the rematch clause is removed from the contract. Whyte wants to be free to “move on” right after the Joshua fight, one he fully believes he will win. Whyte then wants to fight Deontay Wilder, replacing AJ in December, and Whyte feels he can beat Wilder also.
“They said it was gonna be a standard contract, but it’s not, there’s a lot of things in the contract now that they didn’t say was gonna be in it,” Whyte said. “It’s like this, he (Hearn) said, ‘We’re gonna send a simple contract,’ and then they sent a very complicated contract with a lot of hoops and a lot of hooks to hook me in. I don’t want that, I just want a simple contract, simple fight, winner moves on and has a big fight in Saudi Arabia. But now they’re trying to put a rematch clause in there that ties me up for a year and messes everything up, I’m not interested in that. If I fight AJ and beat him, I can’t just move on and fight in the big fights. They want the ability to change the date and the venue.
“I’m like, ‘No, let’s just have the fight on August 12th and that’s it. I would love to fight Joshua, beat him, then go on and fight Wilder and beat him.”
If what Whyte is saying is true, and there’s no reason to doubt him, it does seem as though Hearn is making things difficult as far as getting the Joshua-Whyte fight done. Hey, you cannot blame Hearn for looking out for his fighter, but are we to believe Joshua is so unsure of a victory over Whyte, or Hearn is so unsure of a win by AJ, that a rematch clause must be in there as backup? And as for having the ability to change the fight date and venue, well, no wonder Whyte is reluctant to sign on.
Hearn says there are a couple of other fighters in the running to fight Joshua if it’s not Whyte next, but the promoter has not named them. I don’t know about you, but I’d quite like to see Joshua-Whyte II, this being a risky but not too risky fight for a Joshua who really believes he can then go on to face Wilder.
As David Haye said a while back, if Joshua doesn’t believe he can beat Whyte, then how can he possibly fight the far more dangerous (see lethal) Wilder?
