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600 Days and Counting: The Dillian Whyte ‘Conspiracy’
As the dust settles on a quite extraordinary month in the heavyweight division, as the plans of Matchroom Promotions and the once pre-eminent Anthony Joshua lie in ruins and as the unlikely figure of Andy Ruiz takes Joshua’s place on a podium only big enough for three with the everyman Tyson Fury and the murderous Deontay Wilder already sequestered there, a little-noted but relevant anniversary slips by almost unnoticed. Dillian Whyte will this week spend his six-hundredth day as the WBC’s number one contender.
For the entirety of that period of time, Deontay Wilder (“an idiot” among other more nefarious things, according to Whyte) has worn the WBC’s trinket. Whyte, during that period, has gone from forcefully calling out the strapholder after increasingly more meaningful heavyweight victories, to shrugging his shoulders.
“I don’t know, it’s frustrating,” the British heavyweight recently told IFL. “[The WBC] are like the FBI. They dig up Tweets where I’ve liked something and say I’ve been disrespectful. Eddie [Hearn] keeps telling me this week, next week. Let’s see.”
We did see, the same week as the broadcast of this interview, as Deontay Wilder announced he would first rematch Luis Ortiz before rematching Tyson Fury, seemingly freezing Whyte out once more. Assuming a Wilder victory and assuming, then, a Wilder-Fury clash for early 2020, further assuming Wilder manages to improve on the first fight where he was soundly outboxed by Fury, summer of 2020 would seem to be the earliest opportunity for Wilder and Whyte to meet.
By that time, close to 1,000 days will have elapsed between Whyte being named the number one contender to Wilder’s heavyweight belt and the fight actually coming off. Between now and that time lie so many foibles that the WBC’s recent announcement that Whyte will be the mandatory should he prove victorious over Oscar Rivas next month is so fraught with peril as to be almost meaningless.
“Why does [WBC Chariman] Mauricio Sulaiman let Deontay do this?” Whyte quite reasonably asks. “They should call it the Wilder Boxing Council. They allow him to do whatever he wants. He’s fought two mandatorys in four years. I think I’ll [be made to] wait another two years. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s some kind of conspiracy against me.”
It seems unlikely that Whyte is conspired against in the truest sense of the word, but he could be deemed a problem nobody, least of all Wilder, needs. Eddie Hearn has seemed to some reluctant to throw his full promotional weight behind Whyte in the same way he has Joshua, and the enormous price that Hearn paid to obtain a shot at a strap then belonging to Charles Martin should not be forgotten. Wilder, of course, is a different and more promotionally powerful animal but the static that failed attempts to broker a fight between Joshua and Wilder has inflicted upon Hearn’s more half-hearted attempts to get Whyte into the same ring should not be underestimated. Hearn has made few friends in the Wilder camp and it seems Whyte has been suffering for it – and for Hearn’s preferential treatment of his prized asset, Joshua.
Still, it must be noted that Whyte’s ascension to the number one spot was hardly resounding. In October of 2017, Whyte was coming off a weird, one-sided victory over Robert Helenius, who took the fight with Whyte on short notice and managed to stagger the Brit in the second round. Whyte did what he had to do in closing out a wide decision on the cards, there is no question of that, but that made him, by TBRB rankings, the worlds #7 heavyweight, behind, among others, Wilder, Joshua, Joseph Parker and Luis Ortiz. Furthermore, although the WBC express a preference that their #1 contender receive a title-shot, #1 is not the same as mandatory and Whyte certainly held no such status at that time. Even today Whyte is almost universally rated behind Andy Ruiz, Fury, Wilder and Joshua, who defeated him in 2015. So the fact that the WBC have been in no rush to anoint him mandatory in some respect makes sense.
Dillian Whyte has fought for a distressing number of WBC baubles in recent times, including the WBC International Silver title and a second “silver” title with a slightly different name. In the industry this is known as “choosing the path” and Whyte chose the WBC. Money in sanctioning fees exchanges hands whenever these titles are on the line.
Here is the single biggest disaster in boxing’s weed-ridden garden: fight fans are not the customers of the alphabet ranking organizations. Fighters are the customers of the alphabet ranking organizations. When Whyte starts paying for the dubious privilege of fighting for these bangles he becomes a customer of the WBC. The WBC then shows a preference to its customer over its non-customers. This is how Whyte comes to be ranked ahead of Joshua and Fury, men who are not WBC customers, when almost every boxing observer would agree that this is unreasonable.
So the WBC place themselves in a position where a questionable #1 contender is named and then ignored. Ignoring that #1 contender in favor of, for example, Tyson Fury who received a shot at the WBC trinket, is objectively justifiable but organizationally untenable. In naming a number one contender and supporting a champion who publicly declares his determination to ignore that number one contender, the WBC place themselves in an unsubstantiated position and Whyte in an unjustifiable predicament. The WBC have taken Whyte’s money and elevated him accordingly then failed to follow through on their implied promise.
Finally however, after six-hundred days of waiting, Whyte has been offered the status of mandatory contender should he defeat Oscar Rivas. They also seem to be prepared, as a salve for the wounds they have heaped upon him, to generate, out of thin air, an additional championship belt for him to wave about while he waits for Wilder to finish his own business in his own sweet time, should he prove able to do so. A loss for Wilder against either Ortiz or Fury may leave Whyte high and dry once more. Fury, particularly, has been vocal in declaring himself immune to the machinations of alphabet organisations, refreshing and wonderful news for boxing, but potentially disastrous news for Whyte.
Furthermore, Rivas, unbeaten at 26-0 and dangling the legitimate scalp of Bryant Jennings from his belt, is no gimme. It is perhaps an exaggeration to suggest that in Joseph Parker, Dereck Chisora and now Rivas, Whyte is running a heavyweight murderer’s row, but he is certainly risking it all against the Columbian puncher and may yet find his six-hundred day wait is in vain. As the fight moves more sharply into focus behind the dramatically differing fortunes of Fury and Joshua, it is becoming clear that Whyte has a real task upon his hands and everything to lose.
Eddie Hearn has described the WBC as “fair people who will put this right” but the conduct of the WBC demonstrates they are anything but. Hearn, if truth is told, recognizes this fact, admitting that even the mandatory status is likely to land Whyte “a timing [for a fight with Wilder]” rather than a fight with Wilder and if Joshua-Ruiz tells us anything it tells us that a lot can happen between that timing being declared and the bell for round one. At the very least it seems that Whyte will have at least one more fight to negotiate after Rivas should he prevail in that contest.
Whyte perhaps hasn’t helped himself at times. He declined a second fight with Anthony Joshua, ostensibly due to Hearn’s demands on the price split for a mandatory rematch with Joshua should Whyte have been triumphant. He has been quick to launch tirades against potential money opponents on Twitter, most recently Tyson Fury after his victory over Tom Schwarz. Fury now refuses even to discuss Whyte whom he dismisses out of hand as a potential future opponent.
For all that, his abandonment by the WBC is a disgrace. They have named him the man most capable of dethroning their champion and then have done precisely nothing about making that fight happen. Whyte’s guess that he will be made to wait a further two years may prove to be near the mark; he will almost certainly have to wait another one.
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Tonight, Philadelphia’s Danny Garcia made his eighth appearance at Barclays Center. Garcia’s 2017 fight with Keith Thurman drew 16,533, the attendance high for a boxing show at the arena. A far smaller crowd was in attendance tonight to see Garcia take on Ivan Redkach in a non-title fight slated for 12 rounds.
Redkach, a 33-year-old LA-based Ukrainian, is a southpaw. That’s no coincidence. Garcia hopes to land big-money fights with Errol Spence and/or Manny Pacquiao, both southpaws.
Redkach (23-4-1 coming in) turned his career around in his last fight with a career-best performance, a sixth-round stoppage of former two-division title-holder Devon Alexander, a 15-year pro who hadn’t previously been stopped. But there was a class difference between he and Danny Garcia, a former WBA and WBC 140-pound world title-holder and former WBC 147-pound champion.
Garcia (35-2, 21 KOs) was simply sharper. His workrate slowed late in the fight, allowing the game Redkach to steal a few rounds, but at the final gun he was relatively unmarked whereas Redkach was conspicuously bruised. The scores were 118-110 and 117-111 twice. The crowd booed at intervals, understandable as they were subject to a drab 7-fight card that was even less interesting than it was on paper.
Co-Feature
In the 10-round co-feature, Jarrett Hurd, making his first start since losing his WBA/IBF super welterweight title to Julian Williams last May, went on cruise control from the opening bell and jabbed his way to a lopsided 10-round decision over Francisco Santana. Hurd, who improved to 24-1, finally let loose late in the 10th frame, putting Santana (25-8-1) on the canvas with a succession of left hooks, but by then many in the crowd had probably nodded off.
This was Hurd’s first fight with new trainer Kay Koroma who has drawn raves for his work with America’s elite amateurs. The scores were 97-92 and 99-90 twice. SoCal’s Santana has now lost five of his last eight.
The opening bout on the main TV portion of the card was a 12-round super bantamweight contest between Philadelphia’s Stephen Fulton and fellow unbeaten Arnold Khegai who currently trains in Philadelphia.
Fulton (18-0, 8 KOs) simply had too much class for Khegai (16-1-1), a Ukrainian of Korean heritage. Although Khegai frequently backed Fulton into the ropes, the Philadelphian had an air-tight defense and connected with many more punches. The fight went the full 12 with Fulton prevailing by scores of 116-112 and 117-111 twice.
If the WBO has its way, Fulton will proceed to a fight with Emanuel Navarrete, but don’t hold your breath as Navarrete is promoted by Bob Arum who undoubtedly wants to extract more mileage from him before letting him risk his belt against a crafty fighter like Stephen Fulton.
Photo credit: Amanda Westcott / SHOWTIME
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Tonight (Saturday, Jan. 25) former two-division world boxing champion Diego “Chico” Corrales will be posthumously inducted into the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame at the organization’s eighth annual induction ceremony at the Thunder Valley Casino Resort.
Corrales, who grew up in Sacramento, the son of a Columbian father and a Mexican mother, turned pro at age 18 and went on to compile a record of 40-5 (33 KOs). He won his first title in 1999 with a seventh-round stoppage of previously undefeated Robert Garcia. Now recognized as one of boxing’s top trainers, Garcia was making the fourth defense of his IBF 130-pound title.
Five years later, Corrales won the WBO world lightweight title with a 10th-round stoppage of Brazil’s previously undefeated Acelino Freitas. That set up a unification fight with the WBC belt-holder Jose Luis Castillo.
Corrales and Castillo met on May 7, 2005, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. To say they put on a great fight would be an understatement. The boxing writers in attendance will tell you that this was the greatest fight of all time. It was named Fight of the Decade by The Ring magazine.
The final round, the 10th, was unbelievable. Heading into the round, Corrales was ahead on two of the three scorecards, but his left eye was swollen nearly shut and during the round he was knocked down twice. No one would have faulted referee Tony Weeks for stopping the fight after the second knockdown. But, somehow, Corrales was able to rally, pulling the fight out of the fire with a barrage of punches that had Castillo out on his feet when Weeks waived it off.
Two years to the very day of this iconic fight, Diego “Chico” Corrales died in a motorcycle accident in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas when he rear-ended a car while traveling at a high rate of speed. He was 29 years old.
Corrales was a thrill-seeker. In a 2006 profile, Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole enumerated these among Castillo’s hobbies: jumping out of planes from 14,000 feet, bungee jumping from 400 feet, snowboarding in treacherous terrain and scuba diving amid a school of sharks. “He lived his life the same way he fought,” said his promoter Gary Shaw, “with reckless abandon.”
It might seem odd that it took so long for Corrales to be recognized by the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame, but there was a period when Corrales’s name was mud in his hometown and perhaps the organization’s founder, Las Vegas sports radio personality T.C. Martin, a Sacramento native, thought it appropriate to let old wounds heal.
In 2001, shortly after suffering his first pro loss at the hands of Floyd Mayweather, Corrales pled guilty to felony domestic violence in the beating of his first wife and would serve 14 months in prison. “The whole family has worn a black eye for it,” Diego’s brother Esteban Corrales told Sacramento Bee reporter Marcos Bretan.
For all his recklessness, the incident didn’t jibe with his persona. In the company of Las Vegas sportswriters, the soft-spoken and well-spoken Corrales came across as polite and humble.
Corrales, one of five inductees in the 2020 class, joins three other boxers already installed in the Sacramento Hall: Pete Ranzany, Loreto Garza, and Tony “Tiger” Lopez.
Ranzany, a welterweight, fought four former or future world champions and was a fixture in Sacramento rings in the late 1970’s. Garza wrested the WBA super lightweight title from Argentina’s Juan Martin Coggi in France and successfully defended the belt here in Sacramento with a one-sided conquest of Vinny Pazienza. Lopez, Sacramento’s most popular fighter ever, made the turnstiles hum at the city’s largest arena where he fought eight of his 14 world title fights beginning with his 1988 humdinger with defending IBF 130-pound champion Rocky Lockridge.
Among the speakers at tonight’s confab will be Kenny Adams. Perhaps best known as the head trainer for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team that won eight medals in Seoul, Adams currently trains Nonito Donaire. He was with Diego Corrales for 24 fights, during which Corrales was 23-1, avenging the lone defeat by Joel Casamayor. Festivities start at 7 pm.
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It takes a strong constitution to be a boxing promoter because things always go wrong. The only law that governs boxing is Murphy’s Law.
Carl Frampton’s first fight under the Top Rank banner was slated for Aug. 10 of last year in Philadelphia. With the fight five days away, Frampton suffered a freak injury while sitting in a hotel lobby. A boy playing behind a curtain knocked over a seven-foot pillar which fell on Frampton’s left hand, fracturing it.
This was the second time that a Frampton fight was knocked out by a freak injury. Two years earlier, a homecoming fight in Belfast had to be scrapped when Frampton’s opponent, Andres Gutierrez, slipped in the shower in his hotel on the eve of the battle and suffered severe facial injuries.
The latest bout to fall out because of an odd development is Jose Ramirez’s Feb. 2 WBC/WBO lightweight title defense against Viktor Postol at a Chinese golf resort south of Hong Kong. The event fell victim to the coronavirus, more exactly the fear it has instilled.
The virus, which produces flu-like symptoms that are resistant to conventional antibiotics, apparently originated at an outdoor food market in the city of Wuhan where live animals are sold. The numbers vary with each new story, but according to one account there have been 444 confirmed cases in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital city, and 653 cases worldwide including two in the United States, a man in his 30’s living near Seattle and a Chicago woman in her 60’s.
The fear of a pandemic (an epidemic becomes a pandemic when it spreads across multiple geographic regions of the world) has led to some drastic measures. The Chinese government has reportedly put 12 cities on lockdown, blocking traffic in and out. At many airports, visitors arriving from China are being screened. There are now thermal cameras than can record a person’s body temperature remotely.
Jose Ramirez (pictured with his promoter Bob Arum) was scheduled to leave for China yesterday (Jan. 23) but was intercepted. Viktor Postol is already there and apparently stranded until an outgoing flight can be arranged.
The Ramirez-Postol fight was to air on ESPN. No make-up date has been set.
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British promoter Eddie Hearn says he’s close to finalizing a fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano. Hearn says the fight will take place in the U.S. in April. It figures that Madison Square Garden is the frontrunner.
If the fight comes off on schedule, this will be the biggest women’s fight in history!
That’s because the odds attached to the fight figure to be in the “pick-‘em” range and that guarantees that boxing writers and others in the boxing community will be surveyed to get their picks – about which there figures to be considerable disagreement – and that will greatly enhance the pre-fight buzz.
Taylor, 33, last fought in November in Manchester, England, advancing her record to 15-0 (6 KOs) with a unanimous decision over Christina Linardatou, a fighter from Greece via the Dominican Republic. It was Taylor’s first fight at 140 after previously unifying the lightweight title with a hard-fought decision over Belgium’s Delfine Persoon.
Amanda Serrano, a 31-year-old southpaw, born in Puerto Rico and raised in Brooklyn, has won titles in five weight divisions. She last fought as a featherweight, turning away gritty Heather Hardy, but has competed as high as 140. Boasting a 37-1-1 record, she’s won 23 straight, 18 by stoppage, 10 in the opening round
What sets women boxers apart from their male counterparts is that the women have a significantly lower knockout ratio. Amanda Serrano is the glaring exception.
Despite a less eye-catching record, Taylor has arguably fought the stiffer competition considering her extensive amateur background. As a pro, her victims include Cindy Serrano, Amanda’s older sister by six years. Taylor whitewashed her in a match at Boston Garden, prompting the elder Serrano sister to call it a career.
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The most bizarre (non)story to appear in a boxing web site this week involved former unified heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe. A man representing Bowe, identified as Eli Karabell, was frustrated because Eddie Hearn wasn’t returning his calls. Karabell had offered Hearn the right of first refusal on Bowe’s next fight.
Bowe, now 51 years old, last fought in a boxing ring in 2008 when he returned to the sport after a three-and-half year absence for an 8-round bout in Germany. In 2013, he appeared in a kickboxing fight in Thailand where he was stopped in the second round after being knocked down five times by leg kicks.
“Will there be another chapter to write for Bowe?” concluded the author of this piece.
Egads, let’s hope not.
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